Birth and Beyond

Birth and Beyond Counselling for Pregnancy and Parenthood, support for bonding and developing confidence.

Birth and Beyond is committed to helping mothers and fathers enjoy being parents as much as possible, and giving their baby the best start. This involves supporting parents in all aspects of the transition from pregnancy into early parenthood and beyond.

10/11/2025

Do you find that your need to keep everything clean/tidy, your baby on a tight schedule, everything kept a certain way when your baby is sleeping is causing you a lot of stress and possibly arguments with people around you?

It might be that you need these things to be a certain way, otherwise there is a sense that something will go wrong.

In psychodynamic thinking, we all use psychological‘defence mechanisms’ to help us manage difficult feelings. And that’s actually normal and can be healthy UNLESS we find it is causing ruptures to our relationships, including with our baby.

That’s when it might be worth thinking about what difficult feelings you might be wanting to avoid. And might there be a different way of managing them?

03/11/2025

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

When things feel stuck, or unfixable?

When your baby isn’t doing what you want? When your partner isn’t getting it? When your support isn’t supporting you the way you’d hoped?

Do you normally feel able to ‘manage’ pretty well? How’s that going now you’re a mum?Motherhood has a way of taking away...
30/10/2025

Do you normally feel able to ‘manage’ pretty well?

How’s that going now you’re a mum?

Motherhood has a way of taking away our illusions of being able to manage our needs by ourselves, sometimes in ways that feel particularly cruel or damaging to our sense of identity.

It can be a really hard shift to realise that it’s ok to allow others to meet our needs. A massive adjustment after everything we’ve been taught about being an independent woman.

If you’d like to think about this more, follow the link above, or comment below and I’ll send it to you.

27/10/2025

Our babies need reliability.

Consistency can be a part of that, yes, but it’s not the only part. Reliability means that your baby can learn to trust that their needs can be met appropriately and in a timely way, and that they are being held in mind.

And that doesn’t all need to come from the same person. Different people will manage those needs differently, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not reliably met.

It can be SO difficult to always be consistent- we’re human! But we can mostly be reliable. Even if the way that shows up is different at times.

06/10/2025

It can feel so flipping scary when you have a new baby. Everything has shifted, nothing feels the same. Bodies, brains, relationships - they can all feel different.

So the hope that there will be an easy solution is obviously high. If only sleep/ feeding/ napping goes ok, everyone will feel better.

And I’m not saying these things don’t matter - they absolutely can make a huge difference - but that there still might be other feelings and griefs to work through.

Becoming a mum or dad is complex - it’s not just about hormones or sleep. It’s a lot of different things in one. And finding ways of being with and working through those feelings - whether through support groups, or with friends and family, or through therapy - it’s really important.

Who doesn’t love finding a practical solution that actually works? It’s such a relief when we finally figure out a plan,...
03/10/2025

Who doesn’t love finding a practical solution that actually works? It’s such a relief when we finally figure out a plan, sometimes.

But what happens when our babies cry uncontrollably, or when we’re dealing with emotions we can’t quite process?

If there’s no clear solution in sight, what’s our next move?

I share some thoughts on this in today’s email. X

The losses of motherhood are not always easy to quantify, so the grief can be hard to describe. But they can be massive ...
26/09/2025

The losses of motherhood are not always easy to quantify, so the grief can be hard to describe.

But they can be massive and painful.

So having space is important. My latest post talks about this more. Link in bio x

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18 Pittville Street
Edinburgh
EH152BY

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Tuesday 9am - 9:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 4:30pm
Thursday 9am - 9:30pm
Friday 9am - 3:30pm

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Our Story

Many people think of postnatal depression, when they think of mums and mental health issues, but there are so many other forms of mental distress that parents can experience, and so even if you don’t think you have depression, it’s always worth trying to get support to feel better.

I have a background in psychological and social research, so when I experienced both Postnatal Depression and Anxiety after the birth of my first child, I became fascinated with why that had happened to me and what could be done to prevent it happen. I became a counsellor in order to support other women to recover quicker, and also to raise awareness about what can cause mental health issues in the first place.

I firmly believe that people are always operating to the best of their ability, so if there is something preventing you from being the mum that you want to be, it’s not through lack of trying, it’s because something has happened that stops you from being able to be different just yet. Counselling provides a way of exploring why that might be, and therefore helps you create more choices for yourself as you see things differently.