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

Birth and Beyond

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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.

17/11/2025

There are so many competing opinions about how to be a mother, especially in the early stages. And if you’re used to doing what you’ve been told is the ‘right’ thing, that can be utterly bamboozling and confusing, because there is NO right way. There is only your way, with your baby and you and your family.

So it can be really hard to think for yourself. And sometimes it’s only when someone asks good questions that you can start to gently figure it out for yourself…

14/11/2025

One of the hardest things to talk about is when you feel terrified of your baby. When being alone with them makes you feel panicky. When you don’t feel you can cope without other people around.

Often these feelings come from a different time, from a different set of experiences. It’s not really that you can’t be with your baby - it’s about the old feelings evoked, and you might not even know where they come from (yet).

It’s an awful, awful feeling. And finding someone who can understand is one of the most helpful things.

And if this is you, please don’t think there’s something wrong with you. You’re going through something you don’t yet understand…

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?

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.

14/10/2025

People ask me how I look after myself to do the work I do, and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot.

So I thought it might be helpful to share some of the things I do to make sure I can show up properly for the people I work with. And I’m not just talking supervision and training (although I value both of those SO much).

I do the basics - sleep, exercise, healthy-ish food - but I also look after my nervous system. Connecting with people I love, laughing and crying at films/ plays/ books, cold water therapy, hot baths, cuddles, dancing and occasionally being irresponsible. These are some of the things that keep me in touch with myself enough to do the work as well as I can.

Oh, and icecream. Always icecream 🤣

&r

10/10/2025

Whether it’s the algorithm or my age, I’m seeing so much chat about menopause just now. And - a bit like the chats around early motherhood - there are so many voices out there, so many experts.

One of the things that keeps coming up, for both early motherhood and menopause, is the need for connection. The need for people who can help you feel less alone. For people that can hold you whilst you’re going through all this.

My latest post is all about this… ⬆️

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.

Address

18 Pittville Street
Edinburgh
EH152BY

Opening Hours

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

Website

http://www.birthandbeyond.com/

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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.