Postpartum and Mom Therapy in Chicago

Meet Our Postpartum and Mom Therapists

Feeling overwhelmed by “Mom” Life?

  • Do you struggle to stay on top of all that you need to get done as a mom?

  • Are you buckling under the pressure you impose on yourself to be a great mom?

  • Has becoming a mom dramatically changed the way your relationships operate, especially your relationship with yourself?

While all of this is “normal” as part of adjusting to the role of being a new mom - or even adjusting to the role of being a mom to a teenager, it still quite challenging to navigate alone. We have therapists who are here to help you with anything that you may be going through at any stage in your parenting journey - from pregnancy and postpartum to navigating your relationships with teenage or adult children.

Specialties

  • Perinatal & Postpartum Depression & Anxiety

    Anxiety and/or low moods are common during this time and can become quite impactful. We can help you determine what you need to overcome these feelings.

  • Relationship with Self

    Motherhood is quite demanding, no matter the age of your kids. Therapy can be utilzed to help you reclaim and reconnect to all parts of you. Self-care for mom is great for the kids, too!

  • Mindful & Conscious Parenting

    We love to help you connect to your values as a parent and work through anything that’s getting in the way of you having the relationship that you want with your child(ren).

  • Relationship Changes

    Relationships with everyone- your partner, family, friends, and even your kids, are often in flux as your family develops. We enjoy helping moms navigate all the relationship changes.

Perinatal and Postpartum Challenges for Mental Health

The journey from fertility to pregnancy, continuing postpartum in the weeks and months after childbirth, has a distinct set of challenges for a mom’s mental health. Sometimes it’s been a long journey to conceive and sustain a pregnancy, filled with grief disappointments, and sacrifices. Women can benefit from support from a therapist to process feelings arising from their fertility journey, help with weighing decisions, and also navigating relationship changes and dynamics that can happen along the way.

Once pregnant, there are major physical changes happening in the body which can bring up all sorts of feelings, some might be blissful joy and others ravaging doubt. Women with a history of body image or eating concerns might feel especially triggered in pregnancy and need some help navigating sharing their body and needs with a new little human. Feelings during pregnancy are often heightened due to hormone shifts and changes as well, adding an additional layer to one’s emotional experience.

It’s also common for women to experience pregnancy loss or miscarriage at some point in their journey to motherhood. Something like 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually in the first trimester, a statistic that points to how common this experience is but not how devastating this can be to go through. Seeking therapy to aid the grieving process around miscarriage and pregnancy loss can be helpful.

No matter what the circumstances were prior to giving birth, there are some common challenges that women and birthing individuals face in the weeks and months after birth. Common reasons for women to seek postpartum therapy include:

  1. Sleep Deprivation: this is one of biggest, all-encompassing, postpartum challenge that impacts all ways of functioning, including thoughts and feelings. Postpartum therapy can help a new mom problem solve around sleep challenges and figure out ways to optimize sleep. It can also help support the challenging symptoms of sleep deprivation like mood fluctuations and anxiety spikes.

  2. Hormonal Changes and Physical Recovery: Your body post-birth has been through a lot and continues to go through lots of hormone shifts. It can be helpful to have a postpartum therapist to help with your recovery and navigating all of the physical changes.

  3. Postpartum Depression & Anxiety: These are very real diagnoses and experiences that can be alleviated with the help of a postpartum therapist.

  4. Body Image Concerns: Objectively, the body goes through a lot of changes in the perinatal and postpartum phases. Subjectively, there’s a lot of feelings that you may have about this! Especially if you’ve struggled with body image before pregnancy.

  5. Relationship Changes: Relationships all around tend to shift postpartum, including with a partner, and even family and friends. If you are raising a child with a partner, there’s a huge shift that has suddenly occurred in your relationship, and both individual therapy with a postpartum therapist and couples therapy can be of benefit. It’s also common to realize that you might need to establish different boundaries with a family member, or that your friendships are suddenly different. Social isolation is a real thing when you’re busy caring for a newborns needs, too.

  6. Pressure, guilt, shame, doubt: All common feelings that women experience postpartum as they are adjusting to their new role and responsibilities.

Therapy during the postpartum period can help you work through and feel better about all of these things and more.

Therapy for Moms of Kids & Teens

As children evolve and grow, there always seems to be something new to learn or to respond to in their development! It can be quite challenging to stay “current” on both your child’s needs as well as your own. Mom’s seek therapy over the course of raising young or school aged children and teens for lots of reasons, some including:

  1. Behavioral Issues: Kids often act out their thoughts and emotions through their behavior, so moms commonly seek therapy for support on how to navigate any behavioral challenges that their kid(s) may be acting out. Therapy for moms can provide support and guidance and a place for mom to express her own feelings about the challenges.

  2. Academic Stress: Kids and perhaps especially teens face a lot of academic pressure. Mom’s make seek support from a therapist around whatever this might bring up for them as well as ideas on how to help their kid(s)/teen cope better with the stress.

  3. Life Transitions: All kinds of things can be happening in the world of a family that can affect both mom and child. There might be a divorce or relationship ending which means lots of adjustments for everyone involved. There might be a big (or small) move that happens that shakes things up.

  4. Self Care and Balancing Roles: One of the most challenges part of being a mother is creating enough space for yourself to do things that you enjoy that perhaps have nothing to do with your kids. First, moms need to feel like they are worthy of and deserve to have time to themselves, which is commonly an experience that can be worked through in therapy. Therapy for moms can also be a bit of a logistical session, planning out when, where, and how a mom might make space for life outside of the kids.

Therapy for Moms of Adult Children

You may reach the point where your kids are “launched” and simultaneously think “this is great” and “I am so sad/lonely, what do I do now?” Empty nest syndrome is a real thing- and can be a challenging transition point in life. Therapy can help women release day-to-day caregiving responsibilities and find new, satisfying ways to engage with life.

At any point in the journey with adult children, moms can struggle with feeling disconnected or not included as much as they would like. They might have ideas about how they would like to be involved, which may conflict with what their son or daughter has in mind. Therapy can provide moms of adult children a space to express their feelings, release disappointments, and learn ways to nudge the relationship with their adult children towards evolution that feels good to both parties.

It’s also common for moms of adult children to be caring for their own aging parents while simultaneously providing care for grandchildren. This can be a lot to manage! Therapy can help women in these circumstances to determine their values/how they would like to help as well as their limits and communicate their needs and boundaries clearly.

Therapy for Working Moms

It’s undoubtedly tough to balance both a career and being a mom! Even with childcare in place, balancing a career as well as mom life can be like having two full time jobs or more. Therapy for working moms can specifically help you curate and manage your experience in both roles, as well as determine what you need for yourself. While it can feel impossible to do so, when you are able to make time for yourself and your needs, you’ll be able to show up in your career and in your parenting role in more present and intentional ways. We often can’t figure out how to do this or what we need in isolation, which is why having a therapist on your team can be a big help.

Benefits of Engaging in Therapy for Moms

Therapy for moms has many benefits, but we’ve thought of a few of the most common ones to highlight:

  • Feeling better in the day-to-day: Moms who attend therapy are often able to work with their therapist directly on things they can adjust in their lives to feel slightly better. Sometimes it’s just simply an emotional release and feeling validated by the therapist. Other times, the therapist may help you integrate small changes to your day that can help improve your mood.

  • Stronger relationships: Therapy can help moms address anything that may not be working so well in their relationships with a partner, family, friends, or even their children.

  • Personal growth and self-awareness: Moms who engage in therapy often learn some things about themselves in the process which facilitates a broader understanding of themselves and what’s important to them in life.

  • Stress reduction: Therapy can help moms identify sources of stress and ways to make slight (or sometimes larger) adjustments to minimize stress.

  • Improved self care and relationship with self: Put on your own oxygen mask first! When you have a better relationship with yourself and are doing more things that feel good to you, you’re bound to be in a better place to support your child(ren) and have better relationships with everyone.

What to Expect From Our Mom Therapists

Each of our mom therapists have their own unique ways of working with and helping their mom clients. Some commonalities you will find, however, is that our mom therapists will meet you where you are and help you identify what you might want to work on to feel better. The first two sessions with our mom therapists focus more on asking you questions and getting to know you. From there, the therapist may work with you to come up with some goals for therapy. Sometimes moms pursue therapy at first to get some help with a parenting concern or ways to navigate transitions in motherhood, but then the therapy evolves to focus more on other areas of their life. Our mom therapists can help you as a whole person, not just in your identity or role as a mom, but that can be an important place to start!

We’re here to help moms!

With the demands of motherhood managed and your feelings explored, you’ll be free to experience a more joyful relationship with your baby, children, teen, or adult child. If you'd like to learn more about mom therapy in Chicago or schedule a free 15-minute call, please visit our contact page. We offer both in-person and virtual services throughout Chicago, IL, as well as virtual services in Miami, FL.

Balanced Awakening Lakeview
4043 N Ravenswood, Ste 301 & 302
Chicago, IL 60613
 
Balanced Awakening Andersonville
5215 N Ravenswood, Ste 201 & 208
Chicago, IL 60640
 
Balanced Awakening Loop
25 E Washington, Ste 1505
Chicago, IL 60602
 

Mom & Postpartum Therapy Blog Posts

Our Book Recommendations for Moms

Mom Therapy FAQs

  • Therapy for mom’s can focus on and help moms with anything and everything that they may be experiencing related to their kids or identity as a mom. Whether it’s during pregnancy that you pursue therapy, or when your children are adults, there are aspects of motherhood that we can help you with to free you up to experience more joy and satisfaction in relationship with your child and in life.

  • The frequency and duration of therapy for moms often depends on how many aspects of motherhood feel overwhelming and/or how severe the challenging feelings and experiences are. Your therapist will assess your symptoms and experience of day-to-day life and advise you on how many sessions you may need to feel better and how frequently those sessions may occur. Most people benefit from weekly therapy sessions for a few months in order to see bigger changes in their life.

  • In the first two sessions, your therapist will ask you questions about your life currently, your history, and where you hope to be in the future. From there, you and your therapist will discuss goals for mom therapy and a plan of action to help you feel better sooner. Some sessions may focus on understanding your feelings better, learning tools to cope with the demands of motherhood, and figuring out how to create more positive experiences in your life - with your child(ren) or without!

  • If in doubt, give it a try! Our postpartum therapists are not only trained to help you with your experiences as a mom, but to help you improve your overall life in other ways. So even if you’re not sure how much motherhood is impacting you, if you have a hunch that you could feel better, we can help you.

  • Yes! But with some exceptions. There are 3 situations where, legally and ethically (whether we want to or not) we would have to break your confidentiality. These include if we learn of any potential child or elder abuse from you, we determine that you are at risk of harming yourself or someone else, or we receive a court order for your medical records. Also, some of our providers are under supervision and regularly consult with their supervisor about their client sessions. Supervisors have the same obligation to client confidentiality.

  • All therapists at Balanced Awakening have a strong foundation in psychotherapy and mental health concerns of women. Our postpartum and mom therapists have additional training specifically in perinatal and postpartum mental health and/or parenting and balancing roles as a mother.

  • Our anxiety therapy rate for the first two sessions is $235. After that, 55 minute sessions are $210. Most of our therapists accept BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.

  • Absolutely! If your symptoms or presentation has already been identified as postpartum anxiety and/or depression, your therapist can immediately take a more focused treatment approach based on the diagnosis (if you’d like help with the specific diagnosis first). There are specific treatment protocols that match up with specific diagnoses - and that have been proven through research to work. Your therapist can consult the research for the most effective treatment route to take.

  • Yes! We offer virtual therapy for moms as well as in-person. Sometimes, especially postpartum, it’s much easier for a mom to get support from a therapist over video.