Postpartum therapy for new moms in the Seattle area

After the baby came, everyone asked about the baby. Someone brought a casserole, someone wanted to know whether they were sleeping through the night yet, and your six-week appointment lasted about eleven minutes and came down to a form you already knew how to answer correctly. What almost nobody asked was whether you still recognize yourself.

You love your child. That was never in question, and it's exactly why you haven't said the rest out loud, because the moment you start, it can sound like ingratitude for something you wanted badly and, for some of you, waited a long time for.

I'm Dania Uritskiy, LICSW, and I do perinatal and postpartum therapy with new moms and new parents, from pregnancy through roughly the first few years. That includes the parts of early parenthood that don't photograph well: anxiety that has attached itself to your baby's breathing, rage that arrives around six in the evening, intrusive thoughts you haven't repeated to anyone, and grief for a pregnancy you lost and are somehow expected to be past by now. Most of my postpartum clients see me online from somewhere in Washington. Some come to my office in Edmonds.

My areas of pregnancy & postpartum support

Storefront entrance door labeled 'VIDA' with the address 109 at top, a sunrise logo, and trees and parked cars outside on a sunny day.

What this work looks like and what we work on

  • I'm glad postpartum screening exists. I also don't put much weight on a good score. The standard questionnaire is short, it's handed to you in a room where you'd like to be finished quickly, and many new mothers know which answers keep the appointment short. The women least likely to be caught by it are often the most organized: the ones whose distress looks like vigilance and never letting anyone else hold the baby.

    So you don't need a diagnosis or a referral to come see me. "I'm not myself" is enough of a reason.

  • The first session is mostly me getting a clear picture, and you deciding whether talking to me is worth your scarce hour. I'll ask how the birth went, only as far as you want to go into it that day. I'll ask about sleep in concrete terms: who is doing the nights, and how many hours you got in a row last week. I'll ask how feeding is going, because it's often the thing nobody asks about and the thing a day is organized around.

    I'll ask who is actually helping, by name, and what your own family expects of you right now. I'll ask whether anxiety or low mood was part of your life before the pregnancy. And I'll ask directly about frightening thoughts, because most new moms won't volunteer them and are relieved when someone asks first without flinching.

    By the end, I'll tell you what I think is going on in plain language and what I'd suggest. Sometimes that's weekly sessions for a while. Sometimes it's fewer, plus a conversation with your OB.

  • Most of my postpartum clients see me online, often during a nap, which may be the only reliable fifty minutes in your week. Nap-time therapy is real therapy. If the baby wakes up halfway through, we keep going with the baby on your lap, or we stop and pick it up next time. Feeding, rocking and losing your train of thought mid-sentence are all fine. The baby is welcome in person too.

  • With your written permission, I'm glad to talk with your OB or midwife, or with a psychiatric prescriber if medication is on the table. I don't prescribe. My view is that medication decisions in pregnancy and while breastfeeding belong with a prescriber who knows perinatal care, and that you deserve time to think them through without anyone rushing you either way. I can help you get your questions straight before that appointment.

    Coordination also runs the other direction. If your OB has flagged something on a screening and suggested therapy, you can tell me what they said, and we'll start from there instead of from scratch.

  • An emergency C-section, a hemorrhage, a NICU stay, a room full of people who stopped explaining what they were doing to you. Everyone came home, so the story gets told as a happy ending, and your body and memory may not have agreed to that version. Replaying the birth while feeding, or dreading the OB's office, are common signs.

    I don't ask you to retell the whole thing in the first session, and I don't push you through it faster than you can tolerate. Often the first relief is saying out loud that it was frightening, to someone who doesn't rush to remind you the baby is healthy. Over time we put together a version of the story you can live with: what happened, and what you needed and didn't get. Partners can carry birth trauma too. Watching someone you love in danger while being told to stand in the corner leaves its own mark.

  • Matrescence is the word for the reorganization of self that comes with becoming a mother. Body, work, friendships, your sense of time: all of it shifts, at the moment you have the fewest resources to think about any of it. Much of my postpartum work lives here, sorting out which parts of your old self you want back. Nobody warned you how hard the newborn stage would be, and you're allowed to say so.

  • This is grief with no funeral, no leave and a social script that runs out after about two weeks. I work with miscarriage and other pregnancy loss, grief after a termination, and the loss that comes with each failed round of fertility treatment. A later pregnancy can bring it right back. So can an anniversary, or the day a friend announces hers. There's more on why so many women grieve miscarriage in silence.

  • Unwanted, horrifying images about your baby happen to a great many new parents, and they don't mean what you're afraid they mean. When they're frequent and come with checking, avoiding, or needing reassurance, it may be perinatal OCD, which calls for a specialist, and I'll help you find one. When the thoughts are part of postpartum anxiety, the postpartum anxiety page covers how I work with them.

    Rage is the other thing almost nobody mentions. In my experience it's usually a sign of depletion and unmet need, and it tends to sit on top of the mental load, the invisible project management of a household that somehow became your job. If you've started craving space from the people you love most, feeling touched out is a real and common experience.

  • If you're the first in your family to raise a child in this country, the advice coming from your mother, your suegra and your pediatrician may contradict itself daily. If your family has a firm idea of what a good mother sacrifices, you may be holding a standard nobody could meet. For many Latina mothers that standard has a name, and I've written about marianismo and the cost of being the good woman.

    I won't ask you to pick a side between your family and your pediatrician. Some of the old ways are exactly what you need right now; the cuarentena, done well, is real care. Some of it you may want to set down. We sort out which is which, for you. If you're also thinking about which language your child will grow up in, see raising bilingual, bicultural kids without losing your own identity.

  • Partners and fathers struggle after a birth too, often silently, because there's no obvious place to say "I'm not okay either." I see them individually, and I see couples whose relationship has been strained by a new baby, which is close to universal and very workable. More on couples therapy.

A seaside walkway with benches and green bushes, a modern building on the right, parked cars, and a bridge over the water under a blue sky.
Interior view of a cozy room with pink curtains, a plant, a floor mirror, a divider, and a small table with a lamp and tissue box, sunlight streaming through the door.

What happens next

  1. You pick a time for us to meet, directly on my calendar. Fifteen minutes, free, by video or phone. You don't have to have the words ready or fill out long forms; I understand the first step can be difficult.

  2. We meet virtually and talk about what's going on. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit, and if I'm not, I'll point you toward someone in my network who is.

  3. If it feels right, we schedule your first full session, usually within a week. I see clients at my office in Edmonds on the waterfront, or virtually across Washington State.

A smiling woman latina thrapist with dark curly hair. She is warm and welcoming. She is a professional therapist. The photo is taken in Seattle WA.
Directly book a 15 min consult on my calendar

Common Questions

  • Please find my most up-to-date pricing information can be found on my fees page.

  • Both can be true at the same time, and the distinction that matters clinically isn't how bad it feels during your worst hour. It's duration and reach. Is this most days for more than two weeks, is it touching your sleep even when the baby sleeps, are you unable to feel any relief when there's a genuine break, and are you avoiding things because of the worry?

    The presentation people miss most often is the anxious one, which I cover on my postpartum anxiety page. That is a treatable postpartum condition, and it is not a fixed feature of who you are.

    If you're having thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, that needs same-day support, call or text 988, or go to your nearest emergency department. Intrusive thoughts that frighten you are different from intent, and if you're unsure which you're having, that's exactly what a consult call is for.

  • You're welcome to, and nobody here will mind in the slightest. A lot of my clients do their sessions online during naps, which is often the only reliable fifty minutes in the week, and I want to be clear that this is a completely legitimate way to do the work rather than some compromised version of it.

  • Then it's still worth bringing. Grief doesn't expire on a schedule, and a loss that was never fully tended has a way of resurfacing later on, during a subsequent pregnancy, around an anniversary, or the day a friend announces hers.

  • No, and honestly this is one of the real gaps in how perinatal care usually gets described.

    Ambivalence about a pregnancy is common and very rarely spoken aloud, and so are anger at being pregnant, grief after a termination, the particular loneliness of infertility treatment, and the strange experience of loving your child while wanting your old life back. None of that makes you a bad parent or a poor candidate for this work; it makes you a person having an ordinary human response to an enormous change.

    This work also covers people who aren't pregnant and won't be: partners, and people who are still deciding whether to try at all.

  • Please see the fees page for the most up-to-date pricing information.

  • Mostly, I know this territory well. I know which feelings are ordinary in the first months and which ones need a closer look, and I can hear about a frightening thought without getting rattled. I'm also used to working alongside OBs and midwives, and to a baby being part of the session.

  • No. An unwanted thought that horrifies you is a symptom, and having one is not a reason to call anyone. What I say in therapy stays between us, with the limits every licensed therapist works under: I'm required to act if a child is being harmed or is in immediate danger, or if someone's life is at risk. I'll go over those limits with you at the start, so you know exactly where the lines are before you decide what to tell me.

  • Not necessarily. Some women come weekly through the hardest months and then space sessions out as sleep and mood settle. Others stay longer because the baby brought up something older that they want to work on. We'll talk regularly about how it's going and whether you still need what we're doing.

  • I'd encourage it. Starting during pregnancy gives us time to understand what happened last time and to plan for the early weeks: who covers nights, which early signs you and your partner will watch for, and when you'll reach out. A hard first postpartum doesn't decide how the second one goes. If depression was part of it last time, my page on postpartum depression therapy describes that work.

Reading on pregnancy, postpartum and parenthood

People standing and sitting outdoors near a waterfront amusement park with a large Ferris wheel in the background on a sunny day.