Therapy for postpartum depression in Seattle, Edmonds, and online across Washington
Everyone said the first weeks would be hard, and you expected tired. What you didn't expect was the flatness. The baby is here, people keep telling you how lucky you are, and you feel like you're watching your own life through glass: going through the motions of feeding and rocking and changing, waiting for a feeling that hasn't arrived.
Or maybe it doesn't look like sadness at all. Maybe it looks like rage at small things, a constant low hum of guilt, or a tiredness so heavy that sleep doesn't touch it.
Postpartum depression is common and very treatable, and it says nothing about what kind of mother you are. You don't have to wait for it to pass on its own. You also don't have to earn help by getting worse first.
I'm Dania Uritskiy, LICSW, and I've been a therapist for over 10 years. I see new mothers, and their partners, online anywhere in Washington and in person at my office in Edmonds. Your OB's office already has the symptom checklists, so most of this page is about something else: how I actually work with postpartum depression, and a few things I believe about it that you may not hear elsewhere.
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Most of my postpartum clients see me online from home, often during a nap, which is sometimes the only reliable hour in the week. The baby can be in the room, feeding or asleep on your chest. If you'd rather turn your camera off while you nurse, that's fine. If the baby wakes up screaming, we pause, and nobody is bothered.
When you're ready to leave the house, I also see people in person in Edmonds, and when the weather cooperates we can walk the waterfront instead of sitting in a room. Bring the stroller. If you'd rather talk about depresión posparto in Spanish, we can do the whole thing in Spanish; there's more on my terapia en español page.
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My approach is relational and attachment-based. Becoming a mother tends to bring your own childhood close to the surface, and the way you're treating yourself right now usually comes from somewhere. Once the practical pieces are steadier, we look at the guilt, at the standard of a good mother you inherited from your family or culture, and at the grief that often comes with this transition, including grief for the person you were before. My page on parenting and identity goes further into that shift, and this post on perfectionism in parents covers the standard part.
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Fathers and non-birthing partners get postpartum depression too, and almost nobody asks them about it. In men it often looks like withdrawal more than sadness: working later, more time in the garage or on the phone, more drinking, a short fuse, a flatness that gets read as not caring. Many partners believe they have no right to struggle because they didn't give birth. That belief keeps a lot of men silent for a long time. If you're the one who has noticed it in your partner, say what you've seen without diagnosing, and ask how they're really doing.
I see partners on their own, and I'd much rather a father come in for himself early than wait until the marriage is in trouble. When the strain is already landing on the two of you, couples therapy is the other option.
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Absolutely no. Most women who get support feel like themselves again. It's hard to believe from inside it, which is part of why it helps to have someone else hold that hope for a while.
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Untreated, it can go on for many months, sometimes past the first birthday, until it starts to feel like the way life just is now. With help it usually shifts sooner. Most women don't wake up cured. They notice a good afternoon, then a good day, then catch themselves laughing without trying. How fast depends on how long it's been going on, how much help you have, and whether medication is part of it.
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It means you're depleted, and possibly depressed. Loving your child and not loving this stage can both be true. Saying it out loud to someone who doesn't flinch is usually the first thing that eases it. If what's missing is feeling for the baby herself, that flatness is a symptom too. Depression dulls every feeling, including the ones you expected to have for your child, and they tend to come back as it lifts.
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Yes. If it's most days for more than two weeks, if you can't sleep even when the baby sleeps, and if a real break brings no relief, call. Sorting out what it is, is part of what a first call is for.
What the first session covers
The first session is mostly me listening and asking. I'll want to know how long you've felt this way and how you're sleeping, in hours rather than "fine." I'll ask how the birth went, and I'll give you room to tell it start to finish, because many women never have. I'll ask about feeding, about any depression or anxiety before this baby, and about who is holding the baby at 3 a.m. I'll also ask directly about thoughts of hurting yourself. I ask everyone, and it should be safe to answer truthfully.
By the end we'll have a shared picture and one or two concrete things for the coming week. Frankly, I'm fairly practical at the start. I don't think anyone does their best inner work on three hours of sleep, so early on we may spend real time on protecting one stretch of sleep, or on asking for help in a way people actually hear. You don't need to arrive with any of this figured out.
I also ask about the things that make postpartum depression more likely, because they shape the plan: depression or anxiety earlier in life or during this pregnancy, a previous postpartum episode, a hard birth or a NICU stay, strain with a partner, money pressure, and too few people around you. Having several of them doesn't mean depression was inevitable, and none of them is a failing. If you've been depressed before and you're still pregnant, that's a good reason to start now instead of waiting to see.
Forty days of being looked after
In El Salvador and across much of Latin America, families have long practiced la cuarentena, also called la dieta: roughly forty days after birth when the new mother stays in, stays warm, and is fed caldo de gallina while her mother and aunts run the house. Families differ on the rules. Some cover her head and skip certain foods; others mostly care about keeping her away from cold water.
I believe that this practice is onto something did something. It makes the mother's recovery the household's job instead of hers. Unfortunately, most women I see in Washington are doing those forty days alone, with their own mother on a video call from another state, and they feel the absence without having a word for it.
You don't need a Latin American family for this to apply. Plenty of cultures had some version of it, but modern American life mostly dropped it. One of the things we will work on together is helping you build an environment for yourself that supports and works for you rather than makes you feel isolated.
What happens next
You pick a time for us to meet directly on my calendar. Fifteen minutes, free, 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.
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.
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.
