The things I wish someone had said to me in that waiting room.
I went in for what I thought would be a scan on my birthday. The room got very quiet. This piece isn't advice. It's witness.
Six minute read
Who I work with · Pregnancy anxiety
Pregnancy anxiety — the worry that started before the baby arrived.
You're nine weeks pregnant and you've already googled "miscarriage symptoms" forty times this week. You can't tell anyone yet, so the worry just lives inside your ribcage. Or you're past the scan and supposedly meant to be relaxed now, except you're not.
Definition
What is pregnancy anxiety?
- Pregnancy anxiety
- Pregnancy anxiety is anxiety that arrives or intensifies during pregnancy — usually focused on the health of the baby, the birth itself, or the months ahead. It can be especially acute in pregnancy after loss. The feature that distinguishes it from ordinary worry is that it doesn't subside between scans or reassuring news; the body stays alert. Counselling helps the worry have somewhere to go that isn't the body.
What it actually feels like
The first-trimester terror.
The early weeks are designed to be hard. You can't tell anyone, you're often feeling sick (or worried because you're not feeling sick), and the milestones are far apart. The 6-week scan. The 12-week scan. The 20-week anatomy scan. You get to each one, breathe out for a second, and then start counting down to the next one.
That's not a flaw in you. That's the structure of early pregnancy in a culture that still treats early pregnancy as a private holding pattern. The body is doing enormous work; the rest of the world is doing very little to acknowledge it.
Counselling in this stretch isn't about fixing the fear. It's about not having to carry it alone for nine months.
Pregnancy after loss
Two pregnancies in one body.
If you're pregnant after a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or the loss of a newborn, this pregnancy is two pregnancies happening at once — the one you're in now, and the ghost of the one you carried before. You can't pretend the first one didn't happen. You can't make this one a clean slate. You navigate both at the same time, and most days that's exhausting.
I work with a lot of women in this exact stretch. Some carrying their second pregnancy after losing their first. Some carrying their fifth after multiple losses. The work isn't about pretending to feel optimistic. It's about giving the grief somewhere to live while the body grows another baby.
For the longer version of how I came to this work, there's more on the about page.
The 3am thing
Pregnancy anxiety at night.
Search data shows pregnant women search for "pregnancy anxiety at night" most heavily between 2 and 4am. You're not alone in that hour. You're just alone with your phone.
We can't make pregnancy hormones stop waking you. We can't make the 3am bladder quieter. But we can work on the daytime so the worry has somewhere else to go before midnight, and we can make a plan together for when the worry comes anyway. There's a difference between lying awake spiralling and lying awake with a few practised places to put the spiral down.
How I work with this
Slowly. From your couch.
All sessions are online via Google Meet. You don't have to drive anywhere, find a park, or sit in a waiting room with people congratulating you. You can take the call from bed if you need to. You can keep your camera off if you'd rather. You don't have to dress for it.
Most of the women I see in pregnancy come weekly through the trimester they're finding hardest, and ease to fortnightly afterwards. Some keep going past birth into the postnatal period — same therapist, no starting over.
For PANDA's National Helpline (1300 726 306) is staffed by perinatal mental health counsellors and is the right call in a crisis. The Gidget Foundation also offers free perinatal psychology in some areas. What I offer is the ongoing relational work alongside those — private, weekly, the same person each session.
Quick facts
- Sessions
- 50 minutes, online via Google Meet.
- Cost
- $150 AUD, GST-free under ATO health service guidelines.
- Free intro
- A 15-minute call before booking, on me.
- Cadence
- Most clients start weekly, then ease to fortnightly.
- Hours
- Mondays and Tuesdays, 9am – 5pm AEST.
- Availability
- Online across Australia. Not currently taking international clients.
- Medicare
- Counsellors aren't covered by Medicare. Some private health insurers (Bupa, Medibank, HCF) offer rebates under extras cover.
- Qualifications
- ACA Registered Counsellor (Member #2243) · Diploma of Counselling (AIPC) · Master of Counselling (in progress) · Red Nose trained.
Reasonable questions
Things people ask about pregnancy anxiety.
Is anxiety during pregnancy normal?
Some level of worry is almost universal. What I see in the consulting room is the level above that — the worry that won't switch off, the catastrophic thinking that takes over a Tuesday afternoon, the night you spend googling symptoms while your partner sleeps. That kind of anxiety isn't a rite of passage you have to push through. It deserves support. Pregnancy anxiety affects up to 1 in 5 mothers in Australia, and most of them carry it silently because they think they're meant to be "glowing."
What if I'm pregnant after a loss?
Pregnancy after loss is its own particular kind of weather. Every milestone you reach is shadowed by the one you didn't reach last time. Every scan is a held breath. Every absence of nausea, every quiet day, every twinge — your nervous system is on alert, and it has good reason to be. This is one of the territories I sit with most often, and it's one of the hardest places to be without someone alongside you. You don't need to wait for the baby to be safely here before you ask for help.
Why do I keep waking up at 3am worrying?
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it evolved to do — keeping watch over a developing baby. Pregnancy hormones (cortisol, progesterone) plus the bladder waking you up plus the cultural quiet of 3am means worry has a wide-open runway. You're not unwell for being awake. But staying awake alone with that worry, week after week, is not sustainable. Counselling won't make the 3am go away on its own, but it gives the worry somewhere else to live during the day so it doesn't have to swell into the night.
Can counselling affect the baby?
Babies in utero do pick up on chronic maternal stress — that's well established. But the answer isn't for you to suppress your anxiety harder. It's the opposite: get support so the anxiety has somewhere to go. Untreated anxiety in pregnancy is more strongly linked to outcomes than treated anxiety. Looking after your nervous system is looking after the baby.
What if my anxiety is about the birth?
Birth anxiety is its own thing — sometimes called tokophobia in clinical literature. If you're terrified of giving birth, or terrified of giving birth again after a previous trauma, that's something we can sit with together. Sometimes the anxiety eases once you've named it and made a plan you trust. Sometimes the work is bigger. Either way, you don't have to hide it from your midwife, your partner, or yourself.
Related support
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Whenever you're ready
You don't have to wait for the baby to be safely here.
Start with a free fifteen-minute call. We'll see if I'm the right person to sit with you through this stretch.
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