If you have experienced trauma during your reproductive journey, from conception through your postpartum recovery, you are not alone. Pregnancy and new parenthood can be fraught with numerous potential distressing situations, such as infertility, pregnancy and postpartum complications, pregnancy losses, and childbirth. It’s no wonder that 1 out of 3 parents report their birth experiences were traumatic, and upwards of 40% of new parents can experience PTSD during the perinatal period. Perhaps it was what happened to you that was distressing, and maybe it was how you were treated that created or added to the distress. This can be a difficult time to navigate, particularly if you feel scared, overwhelmed by your symptoms, and isolated and alone. And yet, there is hope for healing! This workbook was written to help you build resilience and navigate difficult feelings. Drawing from empirically validated research and clinical experience, this book will help you educate yourself to further understand what you have experienced, and learn how to manage your trauma reactions. Written with sleep-deprived and traumatized parents and parents-to-be in mind, this book is divided into easy-to-read sections to help you manage your emotions and find validation and reassurance. Chapters begin by helping you identify what reproductive trauma is, what is happening "below the surface" with the brain and body’s reactive responses, and the various emotional aspects of these events. The second section focuses on building tangible skills to manage the impact of trauma, including trauma reactions and the influence on relationships and attachment with the baby. The third section provides a map of the future, instils hope around healing, highlights professional treatment options, and explores the complicated decision about future pregnancies. Whether you are preparing for trauma therapy, already working with a mental health therapist, or just starting to explore aspects of your experience, this workbook can provide support wherever you are on your healing journey. Filled with activities and gentle writing prompts, this comprehensive resource is essential for expecting or new parents who have experienced traumatic distress during this time, as well as mental health clinicians and birth providers.

A comprehensive guide for the clinical practitioner. The authors draw from a wealth of empirical research as well as numerous case studies to provide a deep understanding of the experience of infertility and how to help guide patients through the process.ùMary P. Riddle, PhD, The Pennsylvania State University, World Campus --

If you have experienced trauma during your reproductive journey, from conception through your postpartum recovery, you are not alone. Pregnancy and new parenthood can be fraught with numerous potential distressing situations, such as infertility, pregnancy and postpartum complications, pregnancy losses, and childbirth. It's no wonder that 1 out of 3 parents report their birth experiences were traumatic, and upwards of 40% of new parents can experience PTSD during the perinatal period. Perhaps it was what happened to you that was distressing, and maybe it was how you were treated that created or added to the distress. This can be a difficult time to navigate, particularly if you feel scared, overwhelmed by your symptoms, and isolated and alone. And yet, there is hope for healing! This workbook was written to help you build resilience and navigate difficult feelings. Drawing from empirically validated research and clinical experience, this book will help you educate yourself to further understand what you have experienced, and learn how to manage your trauma reactions. Written with sleep-deprived and traumatized parents and parents-to-be in mind, this book is divided into easy-to-read sections to help you manage your emotions and find validation and reassurance. Chapters begin by helping you identify what reproductive trauma is, what is happening "below the surface" with the brain and body's reactive responses, and the various emotional aspects of these events. The second section focuses on building tangible skills to manage the impact of trauma, including trauma reactions and the influence on relationships and attachment with the baby. The third section provides a map of the future, instils hope around healing, highlights professional treatment options, and explores the complicated decision about future pregnancies. Whether you are preparing for trauma therapy, already working with a mental health therapist, or just starting to explore aspects of your experience, this workbook can provide support wherever you are on your healing journey. Filled with activities and gentle writing prompts, this comprehensive resource is essential for expecting or new parents who have experienced traumatic distress during this time, as well as mental health clinicians and birth providers.

This book helps you throughout your pregnancy and postpartum/postnatal recovery. By helping you understand what you are feeling, and teaching you empirically validated new skills so you can manage your changing moods, you can work toward feeling better. Becoming a new parent is one of the biggest changes one can face in life. You are experiencing enormous changes biologically, hormonally, and emotionally. Your whole life may seem uprooted. It makes sense that you might be feeling significant mood changes as well. With one out of five mothers and one out of ten partners experiencing depression and anxiety when having a baby, this workbook will remind you that you are not alone. This workbook is written with sleep-deprived new parents in mind, providing helpful information in short, digestible segments. These are intermixed with thought-provoking activities such as brief journaling prompts and suggestions for tangible steps to make small, realistic changes. You can pick it up and put it down, reading it on your timing, without the information becoming overwhelming. The workbook covers the entire range of mood symptoms, from the Baby Blues, to anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, and more. The Pregnancy and Postpartum Mood Workbook uses inclusive language and content applicable to all new parents. There are chapters uniquely dedicated to building attachment, managing awful thoughts, bringing awareness to your partner's mental health, parenting babies in the NICU or with medical issues, and exploring culture, identity, and mental health. There is also a resource section with a wide array of support available to meet the needs of any parent. Adoptive and single parents, LGBTQ+ and heterosexual parents, as well as clinicians and birth workers will find this book to be an invaluable resource.

For people experiencing infertility, wanting a baby is a craving unlike any other. The intensity of their longing is matched only by the complexity of the emotional maze they must navigate. With insight and compassion, Drs. Janet Jaffe, Martha Diamond, and David Diamond-specialists in the field of Reproductive Psychology who have each experienced their own struggle with infertility-give couples the tools to: *Reduce their sense of helplessness and isolation *Identify their mates' coping styles to erase unfair expectations *Listen to their "unsung lullabies"--their conscious and unconscious dreams about having a family--to mourn the losses of infertility and move on. Ground-breaking, wise, and compassionate, Unsung Lullabies is a necessary companion for anyone coping with infertility.

Psychologist and birth trauma expert Maureen Campion shares her lessons for releasing the unexpected wounds that come from having a rough birth experience. Birth can be beautiful and spiritual and joyous but there are also terrifying, emotionally raw, painful moments that can be difficult to move past. This book offers you a chance to experience the healing power of working through your birth story, while learning about trauma and developing coping skills for all those complicated feelings. Maureen Campion shares her personal experience with birth trauma and the work she has been doing working with mothers through workshops and counseling to address resolving unexpected birth outcomes. Heal Your Birth Story offers new understanding to the impact of birth on mothers and their partners. Journaling exercises are offered to lead the reader through multiple layers of understanding and healing.

Postpartum depression has become a more recognized mental illness over the past decade as a result of education and increased awareness. Traumatic childbirth, however, is still often overlooked, resulting in a scarcity of information for health professionals. This is in spite of up to 34% of new mothers reporting experiencing a traumatic childbirth and prevalence rates rising for high risk mothers, such as those who experience stillbirth or who had very low birth weight infants. This ground-breaking book brings together an academic, a clinician and a birth trauma activist. Each chapter discusses current research, women’s stories, the common themes in the stories and the implications of these for practice, clinical case studies and a clinician’s insights and recommendations for care. Topics covered include: mothers’ perspectives, fathers’ perspectives, the impact on breastfeeding, the impact on subsequent births, PTSD after childbirth and EMDR treatment for PTSD. This book is a valuable resource for health professionals who come into contact with new mothers, providing the most current and accurate information on traumatic childbirth. It also presents mothers’ experiences in a manner that is accessible to women, their partners, and families.

At least one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, yet pregnancy loss remains a taboo topic and effective aftercare is rarely available for those who have experienced it. Grief Unseen explains the different kinds of childbearing losses, such as failed fertility treatment, ectopic pregnancy, and stillbirth, and explores their emotional impact on women and their partners, and the process of healing. An established art therapist and mental health counselor, Laura Seftel shares her own experiences of miscarriage and recovery, and describes the use of art and ritual as a response to loss in traditional and modern cultures. She presents a rich variety of artists who have explored pregnancy loss in their work, including Frida Kahlo, Judy Chicago, and Tori Amos, and shows how people with no previous artistic experience can generate creative responses as part of the healing process. The book includes step-by-step exercises in guided imagery, poetry, visual art, journaling, and creating rituals. This accessible, positive resource will be useful to practitioners in the fields of medicine, mental health, art therapy, and counseling, as well as women and families who have suffered pregnancy loss.

Infertility Counseling: A Comprehensive Handbook for Clinicians, 2nd edition, is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary textbook for all health professionals providing care for individuals facing reproductive health issues. It is the most thorough and extensive book currently available for clinicians in the field of infertility counseling, providing an exhaustive and comprehensive review of topics. It addresses both the medical and psychological aspects of infertility, reviewing assessment approaches, treatment strategies, counseling for medical conditions impacting fertility, third-party reproduction, alternative family building and post infertility counseling issues. Each chapter follows the same format: introduction, historical overview, literature review, theoretical framework, identification of clinical issues, suggestions for therapeutic interventions, and future implication. This edition also includes extensive appendixes of clinical tools useful to the clinician, including an Internet database of resources and an extensive glossary of terminology.

Trauma and Motherhood in Contemporary Literature and Culture repositions motherhood studies through the lens of trauma theory by exploring new challenges surrounding conception, pregnancy, and postpartum experiences. Chapters investigate nine case studies of motherhood trauma and recovery in literature and culture from the last twenty years by exploring their emotional consequences through the lens of trauma, resilience, and “working through” theories. Contributions engage with a transnational corpus drawn from the five continents and span topics as rarely discussed as pregnancy denial, surrogacy, voluntary or involuntary childlessness, racism and motherhood, carceral mothering practices, surrogacy, IVF, artificial wombs, and mothering through war, genocide, and migration. Accompanied by an online creative supplement, this volume deals with silenced aspects of embodied motherhood while enhancing a better understanding of the cathartic effects of storytelling.