Manisha Sheth - Baby Loss & Perinatal Counsellor

Manisha Sheth - Baby Loss & Perinatal Counsellor Counsellor & trainer supporting parents and professionals with baby loss, perinatal mental health, and culturally aligned care.

12/04/2026

Many people don’t say “I’m not coping.”

Not because they aren’t struggling, but because the words can feel too heavy, too exposing, or too unfamiliar.

Instead, distress often shows up in quieter phrases.

🍂 “I’m just tired.”
🍂“It’s been a busy week.”
🍂 “I just need to get through this month.”

Sometimes these are simply everyday comments. But sometimes they’re the closest someone feels able to come to saying that things feel hard.

For many people, especially parents or those used to holding things together for others, admitting they’re not coping can feel like failure.

So the message comes out sideways.

🌿 Noticing these moments, in ourselves or others, can open the door to gentler conversations.

Sometimes the most supportive response isn’t fixing anything.

It’s simply saying: “That sounds like a lot.”

~ Manisha 🦋

During the perinatal period, stress is often spoken about in big words like anxiety, burnout and overwhelm, but for many...
09/04/2026

During the perinatal period, stress is often spoken about in big words like anxiety, burnout and overwhelm, but for many parents, it shows up in quieter ways.

🍂 In the constant mental planning.
🍂 In the tension that doesn’t quite leave the body.
🍂 In the feeling of being responsible for everything all the time.

🍂 For some, it looks like irritability.
🍂 For others, it feels like numbness or disconnection.

And because many parents feel pressure to appear grateful or coping, stress can go unnoticed for a long time.

Stress in this season doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.
It often reflects how much responsibility, change, and adjustment the perinatal period asks of you.

As part of Stress Awareness Month, it can be helpful simply to pause and ask:
🌿 What has stress been feeling like for me lately?

Awareness is often where care begins.

~ Manisha 🦋

Today is World Health Day. And this year, I want to use it to say something that still needs saying loudly, and often.Me...
07/04/2026

Today is World Health Day. And this year, I want to use it to say something that still needs saying loudly, and often.

Mental health is health.

🍂 Not a sub-category.
🍂 Not a last resort.
🍂 Not something to address once everything else has been checked and signed off.

In pregnancy and the perinatal period, mental health is woven into everything. How we experience birth, how we bond with our babies, how we recover, how we find ourselves again on the other side of a transition that changes us completely.

🍂 1 in 5 women will experience a perinatal mental health condition. And many, particularly those navigating cultural stigma, inadequate screening, or a system that doesn’t truly see them, will do so without the support they deserve.

This is for anyone in that gap.

Your mental health this season matters. Not eventually. Now.

🌿 Swipe through, save it, and share it with someone who needs to see it today.

~ Manisha 🦋

05/04/2026

There’s a version of parenthood most of us carry long before our baby arrives.

We build it carefully. Through books, classes, conversations, carefully curated feeds. We imagine the tiredness and tell ourselves we can handle it. We imagine the love and assume it will carry us through everything else.

And then it arrives. And it’s real, and it’s raw, and it’s nothing like the version we rehearsed.

🍂 The tiredness is deeper than you imagined.
🍂 The love is bigger, and sometimes more complicated, than you expected.
And you, somewhere in the middle of it all, are trying to find your footing in a life that looks completely different from the one you knew.

The gap between anticipating parenthood and actually living it is one of the least talked about experiences in the perinatal period.

🍂 Not because something went wrong.
🍂 Not because you weren’t ready enough.
But because no amount of preparation can fully reach you for the enormity of what this transition actually is.

It changes your identity. Your relationships. Your sense of self. Your body. Your time. Your sense of what you thought you knew about yourself.

And often, the more prepared you thought you were, the harder the gap can hit. Because when reality doesn’t match the version you built in your mind, it can feel like failure. Like you’re the only one who didn’t get it right.

You’re not.

That disorientation, that quiet grief, that sense of loss sitting alongside the love… It’s one of the most human responses to one of the most profound transitions a person can go through.

If you’re in that gap right now, between who you were and who you’re becoming, you don’t have to find your way through it alone.

🌿 I’m officially open to new clients again. If you’ve been thinking about working together, this is your sign. DM or head over to www.manishasheth.co.uk to get in touch.

~ Manisha 🦋

29/03/2026

Let’s talk about something that doesn’t get named enough.

Resentment in early parenthood.

It’s there for so many couples, building quietly underneath the love, the exhaustion, and the sheer weight of keeping everything going. And because it feels so at odds with how we think we should be feeling in this season, it often goes unspoken. Unnamed. Pushed down until it finds another way out.

It might sound like:

🍂 Anger about the division of night feeds, or household tasks, or mental load that was never agreed, just assumed.
🍂 Feeling invisible. Like your exhaustion, your identity shift, your needs don’t register in the same way.
🍂 Watching your partner have a life that still looks something like it did before, while yours has changed beyond recognition.
🍂 Grieving the relationship you had, and not knowing how to say that without it sounding like you regret becoming parents.

Resentment isn’t proof that your relationship has failed. It’s information. It’s pointing to something that needs to be seen, spoken, and shared, in a way that doesn’t further damage the relationship in the process.

In the perinatal period, the conditions for resentment are almost built-in: unequal load, sleep deprivation, identity loss, no time or space to process any of it together. It doesn’t make you a bad partner. It makes you human.

But it does need somewhere to go.

🌿 If this is sitting in your relationship right now, it’s worth bringing it into the light. Carefully. With support if needed.

You don’t have to keep carrying it quietly.

~ Manisha 🦋

🦋 Two people. Two upbringings. One tiny person who has brought it all to the surface.Cultural differences in parenting e...
26/03/2026

🦋 Two people. Two upbringings. One tiny person who has brought it all to the surface.

Cultural differences in parenting expectations are one of the most common, and least talked about, sources of tension for couples in the perinatal period. Not because the love isn’t there. But because so many of the beliefs we hold about how to raise children are deeply personal, quietly inherited, and rarely examined until they’re suddenly in conflict.

This carousel explores some of the ways that tension shows up, and what it might actually be about beneath the surface.

🌿 If this speaks to something in your relationship right now, you’re not alone, and it doesn’t have to stay stuck. Couples counselling is available, in a space that understands the cultural layers.

Save this. Share it with a partner, a friend, or anyone navigating this quietly.

~ Manisha 🦋

23/03/2026

This one is for the fathers.

The perinatal period, pregnancy, birth, and those early months, is rightly understood as a profound time for mothers. But it is also a time of enormous change, pressure, and adjustment for fathers and partners. And that experience is rarely given the space it deserves.

Fathers can feel invisible in these months in ways that are hard to articulate.

🍂 Invisible in appointments, where the focus is, understandably, on mother and baby.
🍂 Invisible in conversations, where their wellbeing is assumed rather than asked about.
🍂 Invisible even at home, where the instinct to hold everything together can make it hard to admit when they’re not okay.

And underneath that invisibility, there can be a great deal being carried.

Fear. Helplessness. Grief, particularly following loss or a difficult birth. Identity shift. Relationship changes. Financial pressure. The quiet loneliness of not knowing where to put any of it.

For many fathers, especially those navigating cultural expectations around strength, provision, and stoicism, there is no language offered for this. No permission to struggle. No clear place to turn.

Paternal mental health is real. It is underdiagnosed, underspoken, and deeply important, not just for fathers themselves, but for the whole family.

🍂 If you are a father who has felt this way: what you’re carrying matters.
🍂 If you love someone who is, gently ask how they really are.

You don’t have to be invisible to be strong.

~ Manisha 🦋

🦋 Postnatal depression doesn’t look the same for every woman. And it certainly isn’t spoken about in the same way across...
22/03/2026

🦋 Postnatal depression doesn’t look the same for every woman. And it certainly isn’t spoken about in the same way across every community.

For many women, particularly those navigating cultural expectations around motherhood, family, and strength, the silence around PND isn’t a lack of awareness. It’s a response to very real fears about judgment, shame, and not being truly understood.

This carousel explores some of the reasons why. Not to generalise, but to name what often goes unnamed.

🍂 If you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t speak about how you were really feeling, there is nothing wrong with you. The barriers are real. And so is the support available to help you through them.

Save this if it resonates. Share it if you know someone who needs to see it.

~ Manisha 🦋

15/03/2026

🦋 Mother’s Day holds a lot.

And before anything else, I want to acknowledge those for whom today is shaped by loss. The mothers whose babies are not here. Who carry their children in a different way, quietly and permanently. Days like this can be especially painful, when the world is celebrating something that also holds deep grief.

Joy, gratitude, love… yes. But also complexity. Grief. Exhaustion. Ambivalence. And for many, a quiet ache that’s hard to name when the world is only asking you to celebrate.

🍂 You can love your children more than you knew possible, and still feel depleted.
🍂 You can be grateful for your family, and still mourn the version of yourself that existed before.
🍂 You can be a devoted, present, loving mother and still be running on empty.

These things are not contradictions. They are the reality of motherhood, particularly in those early years, and particularly for those doing it without enough support around them.

In the perinatal period, this depletion can go very deep. It doesn’t always look like a crisis. Sometimes it looks like going through the motions. Feeling numb. Struggling to recognise yourself. Wondering why you don’t feel the way you thought you would.

If that’s where you are today: you are not failing. You are not ungrateful. You are not alone.

Motherhood deserves more than one day of recognition. It deserves honest conversation, real support, and the space to say this is hard without it being taken as a sign that something is wrong with you.

🌿 To every mother carrying more than anyone sees… I see you.

~ Manisha 🦋

🦋 Spring has a way of arriving with expectations attached.Reset. Refresh. Renew. The messaging is everywhere, and while ...
12/03/2026

🦋 Spring has a way of arriving with expectations attached.

Reset. Refresh. Renew. The messaging is everywhere, and while it’s well-meaning, it can quietly add to the pressure so many people are already carrying.

🍂 If you’re in the middle of new parenthood, pregnancy, loss, or simply a season of life that feels heavy, the idea of a “fresh start” can feel more alienating than inspiring

You don’t have to reinvent yourself to prove that you’re growing.

🍂 Sometimes the most honest and courageous thing is to stay with where you are, without rushing past it.

Swipe through if that’s something you need to hear today.

~ Manisha 🦋

08/03/2026

🦋 On International Women’s Day, I want to talk about something that rarely gets named clearly enough.

The invisible mental load.

🍂 It’s not just the tasks. It’s the remembering, the anticipating, the planning, the noticing. Holding the emotional temperature of a household. Knowing what’s running low, what needs booking, what someone’s worried about, what hasn’t been said yet.

It lives in the background, constantly running.

🍂 In the perinatal period, this weight shifts and grows in ways that feel quietly destabilising. More to hold, more to feel, more to carry… and often less language for any of it.

For many women navigating cultural expectations around what a good mother, daughter, or partner looks like, this load is rarely shared, rarely seen, and rarely named.

🍂 I know this personally.

Recently my own invisible load caught up with me. It showed up in my health, and I had no choice but to rest. In that stillness, I realised how much I’d been carrying without question. Now rest is intentional. The pressure has loosened. And I’m so much better for it.

🍂 Exhaustion here is not a time management failure. Sometimes it takes our body making the decision before we finally listen.

If you’re tired in that deep, unnamed way, it makes sense. It is not weakness, and it is not yours to carry alone.

🌿 Rest is not laziness. Support is not a luxury. And being seen is not too much to ask for.

~ Manisha 🦋

Pregnancy after loss can bring a unique mix of hope, fear, and grief.In this two-hour workshop, we explore how professio...
05/03/2026

Pregnancy after loss can bring a unique mix of hope, fear, and grief.

In this two-hour workshop, we explore how professionals can better support families navigating pregnancy after loss.

Together we’ll look at:

• lived experiences
• inclusive language
• trauma-informed care
• the role of partners and wider family
• practical support strategies

Delivered by Aasha Training, fully funded by Abigail’s Footsteps.

✨ Save your seat here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-1-supporting-families-through-pregnancy-after-loss-tickets-1776045382549

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