Infertility Therapy in Ohio

Infertility counseling (sometimes called infertility therapy)  is specialized mental health support for people navigating the emotional, relational, and psychological impact of infertility and the path to parenthood.

It's different from general therapy in one important way: the focus is specifically on what you're experiencing — the grief, the uncertainty, the relationship strain, the identity shifts, the trauma of loss, and the exhausting mental load of a journey that affects every part of your life.

Infertility counseling isn't just about coping. It's about helping you process what you're going through in real time, reconnect with yourself in the middle of a disorienting experience, make difficult decisions with clarity, and find steadier ground — whether you're in the middle of active treatment, recovering from a loss, or trying to figure out what comes next.

For many of my clients, it's the first place they've been able to say exactly what they're feeling without managing anyone else's reaction to it.  For a lot of people, that’s where the real work begins. 

Yes. I work with individuals navigating many different paths to parenthood, including LGBTQ+ family building, donor conception, reciprocal IVF, surrogacy, fertility preservation, and single parenthood by choice.  

While every journey is unique, many people face similar experiences of uncertainty, grief, waiting, difficult decisions, and navigating systems that were not designed with their family structure in mind.

You deserve support that honors both your identity and your path to parenthood.

One note: I'm currently in training for psychoeducation evaluations for donor and surrogacy services and expect to add those in 2027 — but that work is coming.

Most therapists who "also do infertility" are generalists who happen to be willing to work with infertility clients. That's not the same thing as specialization — and you'll feel the difference in the first session.

With a generalist, you'll likely spend significant time explaining your medical process, translating acronyms, and providing context before you ever get to the actual emotional work. With me, you don't have to do any of that. I don’t need you to explain why the two-week wait can consume you emotionally, why a negative beta hits differently than a missed period, and why "just relax" is one of the most unhelpful things anyone can say to you.

That means from the very first session, we're working — not orienting.

Not at all. Clients come to me at every stage of the journey — before treatment begins, in the middle of active cycles, after a loss, while taking a break, and after treatment has ended (whether that ended in a baby, a different path to family building, or the decision to live child-free).

There is no wrong time to start. If infertility is affecting your mental health, your relationships, or your sense of self — that's reason enough.

 Yes and I'd argue it's one of the most important times to have support.

Pregnancy loss and failed IVF cycles carry a particular kind of grief that our culture is genuinely bad at holding. There's often no funeral, no bereavement leave, no casseroles on the doorstep. People around you may not know what to say, may minimize what happened, or may move on faster than you're able to. You might find yourself grieving alone — or feeling pressure to "stay positive" and move straight into the next cycle before you've had any space to process the one you just survived.

Therapy gives you that space. It also gives you somewhere to hold the complexity of it — because grief after pregnancy loss or a failed cycle isn't always clean or linear. It can live alongside hope, anger, guilt, relief, and a dozen other things simultaneously. You don't have to make sense of it alone.

If you've experienced a loss — whether anyone else recognized it as one or not — you deserve support.

Not only is it normal — it would be strange if you didn't.

Anger, jealousy, and bitterness, and guilt are grief responses. They show up when something we deeply want feels out of reach, when the path feels unfair, and when the world keeps moving forward in ways that feel like a quiet reminder of what we don't have yet. Pregnancy announcements, baby showers, offhand comments from people who got pregnant without trying — these things land differently when you're in the middle of infertility. That's not a character flaw. That's a completely human response to a genuinely painful situation.

Guilt tends to show up in particularly sneaky ways. You might wonder if you somehow caused this — if you waited too long, stressed too much, or made the wrong choices somewhere along the way. You might feel guilty for being angry at a pregnant friend who did nothing wrong. You might feel guilty for not feeling more hopeful, or for feeling relieved when you get a break from treatment. Guilt has a way of attaching itself to almost everything in this process.

What I've found in working with clients is that these feelings almost always come with a layer of shame attached — like you're supposed to be above it, or like feeling bitter or guilty means you're not a good person. You're not a bad person. You're a person in pain, doing the best you can inside an incredibly hard situation.

In therapy, we don't judge those feelings. We work with them — because they're usually pointing directly at something important.

Infertility asks couples to make high-stakes decisions under chronic stress, often while grieving and receiving very little support. It's not surprising that partners cope differently under that kind of pressure.

One person may want to talk constantly while the other avoids the topic altogether. One person may feel hopeful while the other feels defeated. One may be ready for another cycle while the other needs a break.

Different coping styles don't necessarily mean your relationship is failing. But they can create tension, misunderstandings, and loneliness if they aren't addressed.

Your relationship isn't failing. But it might be asking for some support — and while I don’t see couples in my practice, I am happy to recommend great couple’s therapists who understand the complexity of infertility.

Many clients tell me they expected pregnancy to bring relief, only to find themselves scanning for danger, bracing for bad news, or feeling disconnected from a pregnancy they desperately wanted.

That's not because you're doing pregnancy wrong. It's because infertility changes the way your nervous system experiences uncertainty.

Pregnancy after infertility can bring joy, relief, fear, grief, hypervigilance, and guilt—all at the same time.

You're allowed to feel all of it — the joy and the fear, the relief and the grief. Pregnancy after infertility is its own experience, and you deserve support that actually understands that.

This might be one of the hardest places to sit in the entire infertility journey — and it doesn't get talked about enough.

There's often an unspoken pressure to either keep going or have a clear reason to stop. But many people find themselves somewhere in the middle: exhausted but not ready to quit, hopeful but not sure they can survive another loss, wanting answers that no one can give them. That limbo is its own kind of grief — and it deserves as much support as any other part of this process.

The decision of whether to keep trying is rarely just one decision. It's tangled up with your finances, your relationship, your physical and emotional reserves, your age, your medical picture, and the quiet question underneath all of it: what do I actually want my life to look like? That question can feel almost impossible to access when you're exhausted, grieving, and running on hope fumes.

Therapy won't tell you what decision to make — that's yours, and it should be. But it can help you slow down, get underneath the noise, and figure out what you actually want separate from the pressure, the fear, the opinions of people around you, and the exhaustion of a journey that may have been going on for a very long time.

You're allowed to not know right now. And you're allowed to have support while you figure it out.

Yes — and honestly, this is some of the most important work we can do together.

Deciding when to stop treatment, whether to pursue adoption, donor conception, surrogacy, or a child-free life, these are some of the hardest decisions a person can face. They're rarely clean, rarely straightforward, and almost never made without grief attached to them. Even the "right" decision can feel like a loss.

What therapy can offer in these moments isn't a roadmap — I can't tell you what the right answer is, and I wouldn't try. What I can offer is a space to slow down, get underneath the noise, and figure out what you actually want — separate from the pressure, the fear, the opinions of people around you, and the exhaustion of a journey that may have been going on for a long time.

These decisions deserve more than a rushed conversation between appointments. They deserve real space, real time, and support from someone who understands both the emotional and practical weight of what you're considering.

Whatever you're weighing — you don't have to figure it out alone.

No — my path to understanding infertility has been through advanced training in reproductive mental health, infertility, pregnancy loss, and family-building challenges and years of working extensively with clients navigating this journey, not through personal experience. 

I've found this actually serves my clients well.  I bring extensive knowledge of the medical process, the emotional landscape, the systemic challenges of infertility, and the clinical frameworks that support healing — without projecting my own experience onto yours. My full attention belongs to your story, not my own.

If you’re looking for a therapist who has personally walked this road, that is a completely valid preference and I am happy to help you search for a provider with lived experience.