Invest in Your Partnership

In our first session, we spend time getting to know each other and I get to learn about your story as a couple and what has come before this pivotal moment. I will invite you to share with each other your hopes and fears about becoming a parent.

In Session 2, we dive into neurobiology and the stress response. What do those terms even mean and why do they matter? We’ll spend time figuring out how each of you respond to stress, what helps you when you’re overwhelmed, and how your partner can read your tells and respond best to you.

This session is all about attachment. I’ll provide some information on what that means and why it comes into play in your adult relationship. I’ll invite you to consider how your early childhood experiences might impact how you parent and how awareness of your own history can give you the freedom to do things differently if that’s what you want.

How have you divided up household duties until now? How do you think that will change when a baby comes into the picture? Things inevitably shift and just splitting things 50/50 doesn’t always work anymore (especially when one parent has gone through giving birth and if they are breastfeeding). We go through some exercises to help you identify roles that play to your strengths and how you feel about asking others for help, whether it’s your partner, your in-laws, or finding hired help.

You may have gotten to this point without ever meaningfully discussing career goals and/or money. In this week, we get right to the heart of these sticky issues. Are you on the same page in regards to who will return to work when, how you’ll pay for things, and what sort of childcare you feel comfortable with? Talking about it now will be a huge relief once the baby is here.

Before you had kids, the biggest decisions you may have made were what new restaurant to try on a Friday night. But now, it seems like there are decisions to make around every corner. If you’re still expecting, we’ll discuss decisions around the birth, how you want to feed your baby, and your approach to sleep. If your baby is already here and you’ve figured some of these things out, we’ll talk about decisions around parenting, discipline, and boundaries. Most importantly, we’ll talk about what you do when things don’t go as expected and how you together can manage disappointment.

One of the biggest fears that couples talk about when they approach becoming parents is that their sex life will change. And, the truth is, it will. But that doesn’t mean it has to disappear or be any less satisfying! In this week, we’ll talk about sex and intimacy and explore how we can widen the definitions of these words to account for changing bodies, schedules, and libidos.

In our last session, we’ll think about how you can create special rituals that keep you connected in this chapter when you can often feel like ships in the night. We’ll work together to write agreements as a couple so that you have a framework to approach conflict when it arises and a solid foundation to fall back on. We’ll summarize the work we’ve done together and consider what signs to look for that you need to seek support in the future.