Palmetto Psychology Clinic
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Online therapy · all of California

Fertility and pregnancy loss therapy

Grief that may feel invisible to the world. We will help you feel seen.

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Fertility challenges & pregnancy loss — online therapy across California with Palmetto Psychology Clinic.

You imagined this chapter of your life differently.

Maybe every month brings another wave of hope followed by disappointment.

Maybe you've spent months or years tracking cycles, attending appointments, undergoing treatments, or waiting for answers.

Maybe you find yourself constantly thinking about timelines, test results, and what comes next.

Maybe you've experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, failed IVF cycle, pregnancy termination, or another loss that has left you grieving a future you had already begun to imagine.

Maybe you feel surrounded by pregnancy announcements while carrying heartbreak privately.

You might be wondering why this feels so difficult when everyone else seems to move forward with ease. Fertility challenges and pregnancy loss can be profoundly painful, often touching every part of your life. What can make it even harder is that these experiences are frequently invisible to others.

Your grief is real, your exhaustion is real, your anger is real, and you deserve real support.

At Palmetto Psychology Clinic, we understand that fertility challenges and pregnancy loss aren’t just medical experiences — they’re emotional ones that can shake your identity, your relationships, and your sense of hope. We’re here to help you carry this.

If this resonates, you’re not alone, and we can help.

What fertility challenges and pregnancy loss can feel like

This kind of pain is hard to explain to people who haven’t lived it.

Fertility challenges and pregnancy loss can touch every part of your life: your relationships, your sense of self, and your hopes for the future. The emotional toll is often invisible, making it even harder to feel understood. You might recognize yourself in some of these:

  • "I feel like my body is failing me"
  • "Every pregnancy announcement feels like a punch to the gut"
  • "I don't know how to grieve a loss that other people don't seem to take seriously"
  • "I'm terrified to get my hopes up again"
  • "I feel so alone in this. Even my partner doesn't fully get it"
  • "I can't stop obsessing over symptoms, timelines, and test results"
  • "People keep telling me to 'just relax' and it makes me want to scream"
  • "I had a miscarriage and everyone expected me to be over it so quickly"
  • "I feel guilty for being angry, jealous, or sad"
  • "I don't know who I am anymore if I can't have a baby"

Many people also describe feeling stuck between hope and grief, never fully able to settle into either. These responses are common and understandable.

You don’t have to carry this on your own. Therapy can provide a space to process your grief, navigate the uncertainty, and find support through every stage of your experience.

Fertility challenges and pregnancy loss don’t just affect your body. What may have started as excitement can become a cycle of hope, disappointment, and uncertainty that touches every part of daily life. You may notice:

  • Grief, sadness, or feelings of emptiness
  • Anxiety about the future
  • Difficulty trusting your body
  • Obsessive thoughts about fertility, timelines, or treatment outcomes
  • Feelings of failure, guilt, or shame
  • Relationship stress or conflict
  • Social withdrawal
  • Difficulty being around pregnant friends or young children
  • Emotional exhaustion from treatments and appointments
  • Anger, resentment, or jealousy that feels unlike you

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The emotional impact of infertility and pregnancy loss is profound, and it deserves just as much care and attention as the physical experience. Therapy can help you process your grief, cope with uncertainty, strengthen your relationships, and move through this season with greater support and self-compassion.

Why this kind of grief is so hard to carry

Fertility struggles and pregnancy loss can exist in a strange, lonely space. The grief is real, but it often goes unacknowledged. People might try to be supportive but say the wrong things. The medical system focuses on the physical, not the emotional. And the world keeps moving while you feel frozen.

A few things that can make this particularly hard:

  • Invisible grief: Losses that happened early, or pregnancies no one knew about, can leave you grieving completely alone
  • Ongoing uncertainty: With fertility challenges, there's no clear ending — just another cycle, another wait, another result. It's hard to grieve something that isn't over yet.
  • Identity loss: For many women, the dream of becoming a mother is deeply tied to who they are. When that's threatened, it can shake everything.
  • Relationship strain: Partners grieve differently. Friends don't know what to say. Baby showers become minefields. Isolation creeps in.
  • Hope and dread living side by side: Wanting to stay hopeful while protecting yourself from more pain is exhausting, and no one teaches you how to do it.

You are not too sensitive. You are not overreacting. This is genuinely one of the hardest things a person can go through, and you deserve support that honors that.

What therapy looks like for fertility challenges and pregnancy loss

Therapy isn’t about rushing you toward acceptance. It’s about giving you a space where your grief is fully witnessed and helping you find your footing again.

At Palmetto, we help you explore the effects of what you’re going through on emotional wellbeing, relationships, identity, self-worth, and future planning. We tailor treatment to your unique circumstances, whether you are actively trying to conceive, navigating fertility treatment, processing loss, or exploring next steps.

In therapy, we may work on:

  • Processing grief that hasn't had space to breathe
  • Managing the anxiety and hypervigilance that comes with fertility treatments or a subsequent pregnancy
  • Rebuilding your sense of identity and self beyond the struggle
  • Navigating the impact on your relationship and how to communicate with your partner
  • Finding ways to cope with triggers like baby showers, pregnancy announcements, and due dates
  • Deciding what comes next with clarity, not just fear

Our approach is compassionate, collaborative, and individualized to you. We know how vulnerable it can feel to talk about these thoughts and fears, and we also know how deserving you are of support, clarity, and calm.

Over time, many clients tell us they no longer feel consumed by the uncertainty of every cycle, appointment, or milestone. They find that grief becomes easier to carry, hope feels less frightening, and they are able to engage with their lives and relationships without fertility or loss occupying every moment. While therapy can’t change the outcome of your experience, it can help ensure that this chapter doesn’t define your entire life.

Support for fertility challenges & pregnancy loss, online, anywhere in California.
Online, from wherever you are Sessions happen at home, in a parked car, in your office. Wherever you can get privacy and quiet.

Who you'd work with

These clinicians work with this specifically. Not sure who to pick? Start with Anni and let her match you.

Meghan Brown, M.S., student therapist at Palmetto Psychology.

Meghan Brown, M.S.

Student Therapist
Family planning decisions · Couples therapy

Waitlist

Kaety Kohlhorst, student therapist at Palmetto Psychology.

Kaety Kohlhorst

Student Therapist
Perinatal mental health · Navigating life transitions

Waitlist

If this isn't quite it

Explore some of our related speciality areas.

Questions about fertility challenges & pregnancy loss

Is it normal to feel this devastated after a miscarriage?

Completely, and more women feel this way than you'd ever know. Miscarriage is a real loss, no matter how early it happened. You're not just grieving a pregnancy. You're grieving a future, a name you may have already thought of, a version of your life you'd already begun to imagine. That grief is valid and it deserves real space. Therapy gives you a place where your loss is taken seriously, and where you don't have to minimize it for anyone.

Why can't I move on after my miscarriage?

Because grief doesn't work on other people's timelines, especially when the loss was one the world didn't fully acknowledge. There's no funeral, no bereavement leave, often no visible marker that anything happened at all. That kind of invisible grief can be incredibly isolating. Therapy helps you process the loss at your own pace, in a space where you never have to pretend you're okay before you are.

Can therapy help with grief after stillbirth or late pregnancy loss?

Yes, and this kind of loss often carries trauma alongside the grief. The experience of delivering a baby you won't bring home is something very few people around you may truly understand. Therapy holds the full weight of that. We work with women navigating both the grief and the trauma of late loss, and we go at whatever pace feels right for you.

I feel jealous and bitter when I see pregnancy announcements. Is something wrong with me?

Nothing is wrong with you. Jealousy, bitterness, and anger are normal grief responses. They are just the ones nobody talks about because they feel “taboo.” They don't mean you're a bad person or that you don't want good things for others. They mean you're hurting. Therapy gives you a place to feel all of it without judgment, and to understand what those emotions are actually telling you.

I feel like my body is broken and I can't stop thinking about it. How do I cope?

So many women describe it exactly this way, and it's one of the most painful parts of infertility. Your worth is not determined by what your body can or can't do, but we know that's easy to say and hard to feel. We can help you bridge the gap. Therapy helps you separate your identity from your fertility, work through the grief and anger, and rebuild a relationship with your body that isn't defined by its limitations.

Should I be in therapy while going through IVF or fertility treatments?

Many women find this to be one of the most helpful times to have support. IVF is physically and emotionally grueling: the hope, the waiting, the hormone shifts, the financial strain, the uncertainty. Having a therapist during treatment means you have somewhere to put all of that so it doesn't take over your entire life. You don't have to white-knuckle your way through it alone.

My partner and I are grieving differently and it's creating distance between us. Is that normal?

Very normal, and very painful. Partners often grieve on different timelines and in different ways, which can create loneliness right when you need each other most. One partner may want to talk constantly; the other may want to move forward. Therapy, individually or together, helps you understand each other's grief and find ways to stay connected through it rather than being pulled apart.

I don't know whether to keep trying or stop. How do I make that decision?

This is one of the hardest decisions a person can face, and there's no one right answer. What therapy can do is help you get quiet enough to hear yourself, to sort through what's fear, what's grief, what's hope, and what's truly yours. We help you make decisions from a place of clarity rather than exhaustion or pressure.

I'm scared to get pregnant again after my loss. Is that fear something therapy can help with?

Yes. Fear of pregnancy after loss, sometimes called “pregnancy after loss anxiety,” is incredibly common and very treatable. The fear makes complete sense; your nervous system learned that pregnancy can end in loss. Therapy helps you process the previous experience so that a future pregnancy doesn't have to be consumed by dread. Many women find they're able to hold both the fear and the hope at the same time, and that's enough to move forward.

You don't have to keep carrying this on your own.

Schedule a session or a free consultation with one of our clinicians. We can't wait to connect.

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Clinically reviewed by Julia Birt, Psy.D. on .

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