Online Therapy for Infertility & Pregnancy Loss
For anyone grieving a failed IVF cycle, a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or a pregnancy that ended in a way nobody prepared you for.
Serving all of California, Idaho, & Maryland via Secure Telehealth
The invisible grief of infertility and loss
You know the feeling: the two-week wait where every twinge means something and nothing at the same time; the moment before you look at the test, when hope and dread sit so close together you can't tell them apart; the way your whole life starts to organize itself around cycles, appointments, and the question that never stops running in the background: will this be the one?
Maybe you've watched the test turn negative so many times that you've stopped telling your partner when you're taking one, or maybe you've heard a heartbeat and then lost it, or maybe you've never seen a positive test at all and you're grieving something hard to explain because it never technically “existed.”
People going through infertility and pregnancy loss often describe a strange kind of double life. On the outside, you're functioning, going to work, smiling at your friend's baby shower (or skipping it entirely and feeling guilty about that too). On the inside, you're running calculations, managing disappointment, and bracing for the next round of hope and potential heartbreak.
This grief is different from other kinds of loss. There's no funeral, no bereavement leave, no casserole from the neighbors.
You're mourning someone you never met, a future that never formed, a version of yourself that didn't get to exist.
And because society doesn't have rituals or even language for this kind of loss, you end up carrying it alone, wondering if you're allowed to grieve something that "never really happened."
The specific grief of infertility and pregnancy loss
Infertility and pregnancy loss create a grief that most people in your life won't fully grasp, and that you may have trouble making sense of yourself. You might be mourning a pregnancy that lasted six weeks, or a baby you held and named, or a pregnancy you ended because the diagnosis left you with no good options.
The loss is real in every one of those situations, even when the people around you don't treat it that way.
I've trained specifically in how infertility and pregnancy loss affect people differently than other kinds of grief.
This means you won't spend sessions explaining what a two-week wait does to you, or why a friend's pregnancy announcement can feel like a punch to the chest, or why your doctor's calm tone sometimes makes you want to scream.
That understanding is already in the room, which means your sessions focus on what this experience is doing to your daily life and how to help it change.
After enough cycles of hope followed by loss, your body starts treating hope itself as a threat. That's why you tense up before the phone rings with results, why your heart races when someone asks a harmless question about kids, why you can't settle down even on days when nothing bad is happening. Your body learned to stay on guard, and it hasn't gotten the message that it can stop.
You can understand all of this clearly and still feel dread. That's normal. It means the grief is living somewhere that talking alone can't reach.
That's why I use evidenced-based methods that work with what's stored in your body, not just what you can put into words.
What changes after infertility and pregnancy loss therapy
You wake up on a Saturday, and your first thought isn't about your cycle, your next appointment, or what went wrong last time. You lie there for a minute, notice the light coming through the window, and think about what you actually want to do today. Your mornings start belonging to you again instead of to the calendar on your fertility app.
You and your partner sit down to talk about whether to try another round, and for the first time in months, the conversation doesn't end in someone crying or someone leaving the room. You may disagree about the next step, but you hear each other. You go to bed that night feeling like you're on the same team again instead of living in the same house with a stranger.
You open a baby shower invitation and you realize you want to go — not because the grief is gone, but because it doesn't decide for you anymore. You pick out a gift, you show up, you laugh at something your friend says, and you drive home feeling like yourself instead of hollow.
You sit across from your doctor and actually participate in the conversation about next steps. You ask the questions you've been holding onto. You push back on something that doesn't feel right. You leave the appointment feeling like you had a voice in what happens to your own body.
You sit down at your desk on Monday morning and focus for the first time in a long time. The project that's been sitting half-finished for weeks starts moving again. You make it through a full afternoon without checking the fertility forum or falling into a research spiral, and when you close your laptop at the end of the day, you feel like you accomplished something that has nothing to do with fertility treatment.
You are intimate with your partner because you want to be, not because an app told you to. Sex starts to feel like connection again, like something that belongs to the two of you, and your body starts to feel like yours instead of something that keeps disappointing you.
Someone at an event asks if you have kids. You give whatever answer feels right in that moment, and then you're in the conversation an hour later, talking about something else, laughing at someone's story. The question doesn't haunt you all the way home.
You catch yourself making plans three months out, a trip, a workshop, or something you've been putting off because you kept thinking “maybe by then I’ll be pregnant.” You book it anyway, and it feels less like giving up and more like choosing to live your life while you figure out what comes next.
Support at Every Stage, Not Just During Fertility Treatment
Some people come to me in the middle of fertility treatment, looking for support while they're still trying. Others come after they've decided to stop, or after a loss, or years later when they realize they never fully processed what happened. There's no wrong time.
No outcome makes the grief disappear automatically. If you eventually get pregnant, you might carry anxiety through the whole pregnancy and struggle to bond with the baby out of self-protection. If you adopt, you might still grieve the biological child you imagined. If you decide to stop trying, the decision itself can be harder than the treatment was.
Each path changes the grief into something different, but none of them erase it. That's why support after the outcome, after the decision is made and life is supposed to move forward, is often when people need it the most.
That said, the approaches I use can change how the grief lives in you. The memories don't disappear, but the physical charge behind them, the racing heart, the dread, the way your body braces before you've even had a conscious thought, can resolve. That's the difference between carrying grief you've processed, and being controlled by grief you haven't.
If your grief has opened a door to considering adoption, I also specialize in supporting adoptive parents through their own set of challenges, and we can talk about that together.
Hi, I’m Summer
What I hear most often from clients is that they want a therapist who understands this experience, someone who doesn't need a crash course in IVF protocols or an explanation of why "just adopt" is an infuriating thing to say. I get it. You shouldn't have to educate your therapist while you're trying to heal.
I use EMDR, Brainspotting, and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) to help your brain and body process the trauma of loss and the accumulated stress of treatment cycles, without needing to relive every detail out loud.
For the ongoing challenge of living with uncertainty, making hard decisions, and building a life that feels meaningful when things haven't gone according to plan, I use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which helps you get unstuck from the thoughts and feelings that keep you spinning and reconnect with what matters to you.
The goal is to help you hold grief and hope at the same time, so you can live your life instead of holding your breath through it.
Therapy Services Offered
Individual Weekly Therapy
Weekly therapy with me is a steady, collaborative space where you don’t have to perform, explain everything perfectly, or rush toward solutions. We’ll move at a pace that respects your nervous system, blending thoughtful conversation with evidence-based trauma approaches when helpful, so insight and relief can happen together. Some weeks may feel reflective and grounding, others more active and processing-focused—but always intentional and contained. Over time, clients often notice they feel more regulated, more confident in their responses, and less controlled by patterns that once felt automatic.
Intensives
Therapy intensives are longer, focused sessions designed to help you go deeper without the stop-and-start feeling of weekly therapy. In a 2- or 4-hour intensive, we create a carefully paced container that allows time for assessment, preparation, processing, and grounding—without rushing your system. These sessions often incorporate trauma-focused modalities such as EMDR, Brainspotting, IFS, or somatic work, with built-in breaks and regulation throughout. Clients often choose intensives when they want meaningful movement around a specific issue or feel ready for concentrated, intentional healing work. Learn more about intensives here.
Logistics
50-minute Sessions are $250.
I also offer 90-minute sessions for $375 and intensive sessions (2-6 hours) ranging from $500 to $1500 for people who want to work intensively.
I don't take insurance directly, but I can provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement if your plan covers that.
I am available early mornings, evenings, and weekends. I provide services online only.
Self-Schedule or Contact Me Below
For the quickest and most confidential option, you’re encouraged to book directly into my calendar by clicking the Self-Schedule Here button below. That button will take you to my HIPAA-compliant calendar where you may request an appointment. Once I confirm your appointment request (typically within 24 hours), I will email you the new client forms to digitally sign. Then, we will meet on your scheduled day.
If you have questions prior to scheduling, you can also use the contact form below, and I’ll reply within 48 business hours. If you don’t see a reply, please check your junk/spam folder.
I look forward to hearing from you!
— Summer Verhines, LCSW
Contact Summer
FAQs About Therapy for Pregnancy Loss and Infertility
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You shouldn't have to spend your sessions explaining what the two-week wait is or why advice like “just relax” makes you want to scream. I understand the medical landscape, the emotional rollercoaster of treatment cycles, and the specific kind of grief that comes with reproductive loss. That means we can get to the work faster, and you can feel understood without having to educate me first.
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Completely. You can genuinely care about someone and still feel gutted by their pregnancy announcement, and those two things can exist at the same time. Feeling jealous doesn't make you a bad person or a bad friend, it makes you someone who's grieving.
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Different grieving styles are normal, and one of you might want to talk about it constantly while the other needs space, or one might want to keep trying immediately while the other needs a break. Therapy can help you understand your own process and communicate about it without turning grief into a relationship conflict.
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That's one of the hardest parts of this experience. The decision to continue treatment, stop, or explore other options gets tangled up with grief, hope, fear, and sometimes pressure from partners or family. Part of our work can be helping you get clear enough to know what you want, separate from the fear and the noise.
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Absolutely. An early loss can be just as devastating as a later one, especially when it's not your first.
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Friends and support groups can be wonderful, and I'd never discourage you from leaning on your people. There's actually something uniquely healing about connecting with others who understand. But friends and groups can't help you process what's stored in your nervous system or work through the trauma. They can witness your pain, but trauma therapy is what can help you heal from it long-term.
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No. The approaches I use, like EMDR and ART, don't require you to narrate your trauma over and over. We work with what's happening in your body and brain in ways that process the pain without requiring much disclosure.
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Yes, and many people find it helpful to have support during treatment rather than waiting until afterward. We can work on managing the anxiety and emotional toll of the process as you go, and having someone in your corner can make the whole experience more bearable.
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Maybe. Pregnancy after loss often comes with its own challenges, like anxiety, difficulty bonding, and the strange experience of grief and joy existing side by side. Some people find that getting pregnant brings up old losses in unexpected ways. I'm here for that part of the journey too.
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I work with adoptive parents, adult adoptees, birth parents, and people grieving infertility and pregnancy loss. Each of these experiences creates specific kinds of grief and stress that general therapy often misses, so I've built my practice around them. All sessions are individual, not couples or family.
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I’m licensed in California, Maryland, and Idaho, and all sessions are online.