Counseling for family building and fertility in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine
in-person in Weston, MA and online
Are you experiencing challenges growing your family?
Perhaps you have been trying to conceive for several months, a year, or multiple years without success.
Or perhaps you have experienced miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, a termination for medical reasons, or another form of pregnancy loss.
Maybe you are a a same-sex couple and feel overwhelmed with decision-making. For example, Who will the donor be? Will we use a bank or a directed donor? Which partner’s eggs or sperm will be used? Who will carry the baby?
You may be just beginning fertility treatment, or maybe you have been in the trenches of fertility treatment for a while.
You may be considering growing your family with the help of a donor or a gestational carrier, or you may be considering adoption (from an agency or from foster care).
Regardless, the path to becoming a parent is feeling difficult, and you are needing support to get through it all.
Hi, I’m Katie! I am a clinical social worker, fertility counselor, and certified perinatal mental health professional (PMH-C). My practice, New England Fertility Counseling, PLLC supports women, individuals of all genders, and couples experiencing infertility, family building challenges, and pregnancy loss.
I am passionate about supporting individuals and couples wade through their reproductive grief and trauma, explore paths to family building, and adjust to their lives after infertility and/or loss (sometimes as parents and sometimes childless not by choice). It would be a privilege to walk alongside you and provide support.
Therapy Specialties:
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![infertility, fertility challenges, family building challenges, IVF, assisted reproduction]()
Infertility & Family Building Challenges
As someone facing infertility or other family building challenges, you may be experiencing a grief response, a trauma response, or both. You may notice elevated anxiety, changes to your self-image and self-worth, and/or challenges in your relationship and support network as a result of your reproductive trauma. In addition, the losses associated with infertility are typically invisible to people who haven’t experienced it, and our society does not deem grief about infertility and family building challenges as socially acceptable or worthy of being openly acknowledged and grieved (called disenfranchised grief).
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Pregnancy Loss
If you have experienced pregnancy loss, then you know how commonly other people misunderstand, minimize, and ignore this type of loss. Like infertility, our society often does not consider pregnancy loss as socially acceptable or worthy of being openly acknowledged and grieved (called disenfranchised grief). Even the people who love and care for you may not know what to say, and their words may come off as dismissive or hurtful. You may be feeling isolated, overwhelmed, anxious, sad, numb, or stuck as you try to wade through the waves of grief.
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![image by fertilit_arty on instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/CxD0Ft_slCa)]()
Childless Not By Choice
You’re feeling exhausted and questioning your ability to emotionally, mentally, or physically continue your family building efforts. Maybe you’ve gone through IUI or IVF multiple times without success. Perhaps you’ve explored other paths, such as private adoption, adoption from the foster care system, donor-assisted conception, or surrogacy, but none worked out. There can be such grief with ending your family building efforts, even if it feels like the right decision or if the decision has been made for you.
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![parents with their child, moms with their child, same-sex couple with their child]()
Pregnancy & Postpartum After Loss and Infertility
If you are pregnant following a miscarriage or another form of pregnancy loss, you may be feeling uncontrollable worry, guilt, or mixed emotions. If you are pregnant or postpartum after going through multiple rounds of fertility treatment, you may feel like the legacy of infertility continues to impact you. Or you may be experiencing postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety after giving birth to the child you always wanted.
