Grief that doesn't behave like other grief
When a person dies, there's a funeral, a name people say, a shape to the mourning. Pregnancy loss gets none of that. You're grieving someone nobody else met, in a body that still thinks it's pregnant, on a timeline nobody acknowledges, while fielding sentences that all begin with "at least."
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At least it was early. At least you can try again. At least you know you can get pregnant.
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So the grief goes underground. You're back at work in a week, performing fine, flinching at pregnancy announcements and crossing streets to avoid strollers. Due dates arrive on schedule even when babies don't, and the anniversary grief that hits you every spring has a cause nobody else is tracking.
That's grieving without any of the scaffolding other losses get — and therapy, in part, is where the scaffolding gets built.
When the loss was also trauma: EMDR
For many women, pregnancy loss isn't only grief. It's also specific moments that got burned in: the ultrasound room going quiet. The sentence the doctor used. The bathroom floor. The D&C you were awake for, or the delivery you weren't prepared for, or the emergency that made the decision for you.
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Those moments don't behave like memories — they intrude, in full color, at the wrong times. This is where EMDR earns its place in this work: it helps the brain finish processing an experience that got stuck while it was happening, so the memory stays yours but stops ambushing you. Grief needs room; trauma needs processing. Most pregnancy loss therapy offers only the first. I do both, and knowing which one a given moment needs is most of the craft.
Pregnancy after loss
If you're pregnant again — or trying to be — the loss changes everything about how this pregnancy feels. Joy gets rationed. You don't announce, you don't buy anything, you hold your breath between appointments, and your body braces as the gestational age of the loss approaches, doing arithmetic you never asked it to do.
This is some of the most important work I do: anxiety in the pregnancy after a loss responds well to treatment, and treating it now protects the postpartum year too. You don't have to choose between honoring the baby you lost and attaching to the one you're carrying. That's a false choice grief sometimes constructs, and we can take it apart.
Working together
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and Perinatal Mental Health Certified through Postpartum Support International — reproductive grief and the perinatal years are my practice, not a sideline. I work with women at every stage of this: weeks after a loss, years after, mid-pregnancy-after, and partners carrying their own unacknowledged version.
Sessions are in person in Studio City or by video anywhere in California, with New Jersey clients seen under a separate license. My practice is private pay: out of network, superbills provided, no diagnosis required, and no session cap — grief doesn't follow an authorization schedule.
Questions women ask me about pregnancy loss therapy
There are free pregnancy loss support groups. Why private therapy?
Groups are genuinely valuable, and for many women they're enough — shared experience at no cost is a real thing. Private therapy fits differently: when the grief is stuck or traumatic, when medical moments are replaying and need EMDR, when anxiety or a new pregnancy is layered on top, or when you need the work to go at your pacing instead of a group's. Plenty of the women I see do both.
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My loss was early. Do I still count?
Yes. Grief doesn't scale with gestational age. Attachment starts before anything is visible on an ultrasound, and an early loss can carry a full-sized grief. "Just a chemical pregnancy" is something that gets said to women, not a clinical truth.
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How soon after a loss should I start?
There's no required window. Some women come within weeks; many come years later, when a new pregnancy or a due date that never happened brings everything back up. Delayed grief is the norm with reproductive loss, not the exception.
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Do you work with partners?
Yes. Partners grieve pregnancy loss too, usually with even less acknowledgment — they're often busy holding the logistics and the other parent, and nobody asks how they are.
This work isn’t just about coping, it’s about change.
Pregnancy Loss & Miscarriage Therapy in Los Angeles and California
I provide therapy for women grieving a miscarriage, stillbirth, or pregnancy loss at any stage — including losses other people never knew about, and endings you chose for medical reasons and grieve anyway.
I'm a perinatal therapist certified in maternal mental health, I use EMDR for the moments that won't stop replaying, and I see women in person in Studio City and virtually across California.
If you're here, something ended that mattered, and the world has probably already started acting like it didn't. This page is about the grief nobody brings casseroles for.
