Reproductive Counselling

Family building can be a complex and emotional experience – whether you are dealing with infertility or perinatal loss, or coming directly to fertility treatments because you require help from a donor or surrogate due to sexual orientation/identity, relationship status or an underlying medical condition. General counselling is tailored to people’s specific needs and situation, and can be beneficial at the start of and/or throughout the family building process, even when infertility is not a factor.

This type of counselling is client-led, based on your concerns/questions and can be 60 or 90 minutes as well as individual or couple.  The first general counselling appointment is normally 90-minutes, since there is so much to cover in getting to know your history and discussing the counselling goals/plan before you get to the “work” of the session. In such a case, subsequent appointments would be 50-minutes in duration.

This type of counselling is optional, as opposed to a clinic requirement, and confidential (within the bounds of the law).

There is ongoing support available as well as one-time sessions to help with issues such as:

• Emotions common with primary or secondary infertility or perinatal loss/termination for medical reasons (TFMR), including: grief, bereavement, trauma, guilt, shame, anger, jealousy, anxiety, etc
• Impact of infertility/loss/TFMR on self-image, identity, relationships, career, etc
  Managing wait times, processing bad news
• Loss of genetic or gestational link
  Maintaining support networks and establishing boundaries
• Developing strategies to manage family/social events, workplace interactions and holidays
• Stress-reduction, anxiety management and mindfulness techniques
• Developing strategies to manage family/social events, workplace interactions and holidays
• Stress-reduction, anxiety management and mindfulness techniques
• Disclosure support regarding infertility, loss/TFMR, use of donor and/or surrogate
• Pregnancy and post-partum support after infertility or loss/TFM