Birth and Beyond

Home
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.

15/07/2025

So that’s me away from my desk for a couple of weeks.

I’ll be checking emails every so often, but not responding quickly until after the 28th, when I’m back again.

See you soon. x

11/07/2025

So in a world of optimization, how do we optimize parenthood?

Yeah, I am being a bit flippant, but maybe there IS a different way of seeing parenthood that isn’t about leaning into the anxiety that your child won’t be ‘good enough’ if you don’t get everything right for them, and more about knowing that YOU are enough.

As ever, link up top 👆for my thoughts. ❤️

04/07/2025

Listening to a podcast the other day where the Hosts were talking about AI and wondering where that might go.

And one of their wonderings got me really thinking about the importance of process. About the going through something, not just getting to the other side.

My thoughts are in the usual place 👆

as

27/06/2025

Motherhood reflects things back to us that we might not have expected to see, and sometimes that can be confusing, upsetting or hard to deal with.

If this is something that resonates with you, you can find the l!nk in the usual place. 👆x

20/06/2025

We can forget that that early stages of motherhood are such a period of learning, of development, and yet we don’t instinctively know how to do loads of things that other people seem to expect we can (or at least leave us to do by ourselves).

So why don’t we think about this from an educational perspective? What might we need as new mums to build confidence at this really formative stage?

Link to the latest post in the usual place 👆

13/06/2025

We’re funny with grief.

We can understand grieving for people or even things. But we aren’t so good at understanding that we activate the same mechanisms when we grieve losses that are intangible - hopes, dreams, expectations. Our heart breaks the same way.

Yet motherhood is FULL of these losses. From before pregnancy we can experiences losses to our identity, our ideas of what to expect. And it can continue from there.

It can be especially isolating because these griefs are so unseen. But they’re just as real and need to be looked after accordingly.

If you’d like to know more, head on up to the link 👆

12/06/2025

We’re told we need to ‘find our tribe’ when we’re new mums, and sometimes that comes easily.

But sometimes your tribe just isn’t there, or isn’t who you think it should be, and you can be left feeling stuck outside and isolated.

But we do need companionship of some kind. How you find that might look different to how others find that. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong, but if you feel that you’re getting it wrong somehow, that’s not so helpful.

If you’re not sure what to do, therapy might help as it gives you the space to explore your feelings and circumstances and expectations.

06/06/2025

Have you ever felt trapped by motherhood?

If you’ve ever felt a little of this, you will know how devastating that feels.

This post is for you 👆

30/05/2025

So around 3% of women have this during pregnancy. That might not sound a lot but it can be utterly devastating for the women who have it. So much so they might decide never to go through pregnancy again.

Yet it is relatively unspoken about, even less the emotional impact. So that’s what this week’s email is about.

23/05/2025

Quite often what we experience when we’re becoming a mum isn’t so much a ‘big’ trauma but rather a thousand small cuts. Yet we don’t often talk about that.

So that’s what my post this week is about. ❤️

Link in the usual place 👆

21/05/2025

Vulnerability after birth…

Did you feel ‘caught out’ by how vulnerable you felt after birth?

So many of the women I work with seem surprised by this. There can be such an expectation of ‘business as usual’.

An idea that you can go through ALL the changes of pregnancy and impact of birth AND then feel perfectly able to just do what you did before.

And that idea can be even stronger if your pregnancy was relatively straightforward, and you COULD mostly carry on as normal.

So this vulnerability can be upsetting. It can feel frustrating or like you’re failing in some way.

You can ignore it, and that works for a while. Or you can face it and the emotions it brings. ❤️

…

My colleague, Joanna, still has availability for low cost counselling sessions on Mondays. If you want to know more, please email me at sarah@birthandbeyond.com

Address

Opening Hours

Tuesday	09:00 - 21:30
Wednesday	09:00 - 16:30
Thursday	09:00 - 21:30
Friday	09:00 - 15:30

Website

http://www.birthandbeyond.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Birth and Beyond posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Birth and Beyond:

Shortcuts

Address
Opening Hours
Alerts
Contact The Practice
Want your practice to be the top-listed Clinic?

Country:

City:

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.