Postpartum and Perinatal Therapy
Located in Lee's Summit, serving new and expecting parents across the Kansas City area.
You were told this would be the happiest time of your life. Nobody mentioned the 3 a.m. panic, the intrusive thoughts that scare you, the rage that comes out of nowhere at the person you love most, or how much of yourself seems to have gone missing.
None of that means something is wrong with you as a parent. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are among the most common complications of pregnancy and birth, and they are very treatable. You can feel like yourself again.
I'm a Certified Perinatal Mental Health therapist in Lee's Summit, and I work with people through pregnancy, birth and the years that follow. As a Licensed Professional Counselor in Missouri and a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Kansas, I see clients on both sides of the state line, in person or virtually anywhere in either state.
You can absolutely bring your baby to session. You don't need childcare to get help.
What is perinatal therapy?
Perinatal therapy is mental health care for the period from conception through the first years of parenting. It covers pregnancy, birth and postpartum, and it's provided by someone specifically trained in how this stage of life affects mental health — not general therapy that happens to be provided to someone who also happens to be a parent.
That training matters more than it sounds. Perinatal symptoms get missed constantly, including by well-meaning providers, because they're written off as normal exhaustion or normal new-parent worry. There's a real difference between tired and unwell, and part of my job is helping you tell which one you're in.
Though this is the technical definition of perinatal therapy, postpartum is forever. Just because you’re child is over 1 year-old does not mean that you can’t still need and deserve support.
Postpartum depression doesn't always look like sadness. It often looks like numbness, irritability, a flat feeling where the joy was supposed to be, or the sense that your family would genuinely be better off with someone else doing this.
It can start any time in the first year, not only in the first weeks, and it does not require a difficult birth or a difficult baby to show up. Many of the people I see feel they have no reason to be depressed, which then becomes one more thing to feel guilty about.
You don't need a reason. You need support, and postpartum depression responds well to it.
Postpartum anxiety, rage and OCD
Postpartum anxiety
The constant checking. The disaster scenarios that play automatically. The inability to sleep even when the baby finally is. Postpartum anxiety is more common than postpartum depression and gets diagnosed far less, partly because vigilance looks like good parenting from the outside.
Postpartum rage
Rage is the symptom people are most ashamed to name, and one of the most common. Snapping, being angry at the dog, a fury that arrives fast and leaves you feeling like you don’t recognize yourself. It is usually anxiety and depletion with nowhere to go. It is not a character flaw, and it is treatable.
Postpartum OCD and intrusive thoughts
Sudden, unwanted thoughts about harm coming to your baby are one of the most terrifying experiences a new parent can have, and one of the least understood. Here's what's important: these thoughts are a known symptom, they are the opposite of intent, and having them does not make you dangerous to your child. Parents with intrusive thoughts are horrified by them — that horror is part of the picture.
Most people carry these in silence for months because they're afraid of what will happen if they say them out loud. You can say them out loud here.
Birth trauma therapy
A traumatic birth isn't defined by what's written in the medical notes. It's defined by how it felt — whether you were frightened, whether you were listened to, whether you had any say in what was happening to your body.
Birth trauma can look like replaying the delivery on a loop, avoiding the hospital or your providers, panic at medical appointments, or feeling detached from a birth, or baby, everyone else calls successful. "Healthy baby, healthy mom" is not the whole story, and being grateful for your baby doesn't cancel what happened to you.
I'm trained in EMDR, which is particularly well suited to birth trauma because it works on the memory itself rather than asking you to talk through it repeatedly.
Matrescence, and the loss of who you were
Matrescence is the word for the developmental transition into motherhood — as real a shift as adolescence, and given a fraction of the attention.
The version of it people rarely say out loud is the grief. You can love your child completely and still mourn your body, your career momentum, your friendships, your spontaneity and your sense of being a whole separate person. Both of those are true at once, and neither cancels the other.
This is often what brings people in when nothing else quite fits. There's no diagnosis for "I don't know who I am anymore." It's still worth and deserving of support.
Perinatal therapy is not only for birthing mothers
Perinatal mental health transcends gender and biology. Non-birthing parents develop perinatal mood and anxiety disorders too, and almost nothing is set up to catch it.
I work with birthing and non-birthing individuals of all identities, including fathers and non-birthing partners, LGBTQ+ parents, single parents by choice, and foster and adoptive parents. I've completed advanced training in paternal perinatal mental health specifically, because partners are routinely asked how the birthing parent is doing and never asked how they are.
All are welcome here.
Postpartum depression therapy
Session length, fee and format
Individual therapy: 50 minutes · $140 · first session $165
Couples therapy: 50 minutes · $165
Art therapy: 50 minutes · $150
Format: in person in Lee's Summit, or virtually on a HIPAA-compliant platform anywhere in Missouri or Kansas
Payment: HSA, FSA, most major credit cards, debit cards, cash and check
Reduced fee: therapy scholarships are available — please ask
Babies are welcome at in-person sessions
Training in perinatal mental health
Katie Kirkenmeier, MA, LPC, LCPC, ATR, PMH-C
Certified in Perinatal Mental Health (PMH-C)
Postpartum Support International, two-day Perinatal Mood Disorder Components of Care training
The Mental Health of Women in the Reproductive Years — six-hour advanced course
Foundations in Paternal Perinatal Mental Health — six-hour advanced training
EMDR Level 1 and 2 trained
Level 1 and 2 trained in Internal Family Systems through the IFS Institute
Registered Art Therapist (ATR)
Licensed Professional Counselor in Missouri and Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Kansas
Questions about postpartum and perinatal therapy
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The usual markers are how long it's lasted, how much it's affecting your ability to function, and whether it lifts at all when you get a break. If you're asking the question, that's reason enough for a free consultation call — you don't have to be certain before you reach out.
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No. Perinatal mental health concerns can begin or persist well past the first year, and plenty of people come in years later because the postpartum period never really got processed.
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Yes, absolutely.
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No. Medication is a conversation with your physician, not a requirement here, and decisions about feeding your baby are yours. My job is support, not instructions. We might discuss concerns surrounding medications as it relates to your emotions, but I am not a prescriber.
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Yes, individually or together. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders affect non-birthing parents too, and I've trained specifically in paternal perinatal mental health.
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The support you're looking for is Infertility Services — a separate thing with a separate page. Perinatal refers to the period from conception onward, so it doesn't describe what you're going through.
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Yes. If you live in Missouri or Kansas, we can meet on a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform anywhere in either state.
Schedule postpartum therapy in Lee's Summit or virtually
Book a free 15-minute consultation, send me a message or text 816-875-0078.
I reply within two business days.
You don't have to be at a breaking point to deserve support. Wherever you are in this, it's a reasonable time to ask for help.