Psychological preparation for women pregnant again after a frightening birth or a stay on the neonatal unit.
Pregnant Again
A SMALL GROUP PROGRAMME. TEN PLACES.
You’re pregnant again, and you’re frightened. Not of birth in general, but of what happened last time.
You’ve been dreading the next appointment since you woke up. And even when the scan is fine, you don’t quite believe it, because last time everything was fine until it wasn’t. People keep telling you be positive this time, the second one is easier.
But that’s not what you’re worried about.
Almost everything available to you right now is trying to make you feel calm. Hypnobirthing, positive birth, breathing, trust your body. For a woman who went through something frightening, that advice asks you to ignore the one thing you learned, and when it doesn’t work, you assume you’ve failed at it.
PREPARED starts somewhere else. It’s built on one idea: when you stop trying to get rid of the fear, your pregnancy becomes yours again. Not because the fear goes, but because it stops taking up all the room.
Before anything else: fifty minutes, one to one with Dr Natalie
This isn’t the first lesson. It’s the door.
Most women arrive not quite believing they’re entitled to be here. That it was bad enough. That they’re not making a fuss. Nothing else works until that shifts, so we start there, just the two of us, before any content and before you meet anybody else.
We work out what actually happened and what you want this pregnancy to be like. Everything that follows is built around what we find.
Then three stages
The PREPARED method takes you from dreading every appointment to knowing what to do, what to ask for, and who to ask.
You work through them in order the first time. After that you go where you need to, and going back to stage two in week fourteen is the design working, not you falling behind. There’s no point at which you’re finished with a stage. They become a reference library.
Understand it
Why you’re like this
Why your brain is still in threat mode, why the memories come back the way they do, and why none of it is your fault. Most women tell me this is the first time anyone has explained it this way.
Work with it
Stop fighting it. Techniques that fit you
A handful of short, practical techniques for the 3am thoughts, the appointments you’re dreading, and the week you’ve been counting down to. Each one doable in under two minutes.
You won’t need all of them. You need the one or two that work for you, and you’ll know which by the end. That’s said out loud deliberately, because the pressure to do all of it is what makes women quit.
Do what matters
Values, people, plan. Fear stops deciding
What you want this pregnancy to be. The words for your care team. The conversation with your partner. Being present with the child you’ve already got. Living with not knowing, which is most of what this is.
And a written plan for the birth, including the part you’re most frightened of.
How it runs
The on-demand content, from the day you join. Short videos on your phone, on the commute or on the sofa at eight o’clock with your feet up once the toddler’s in bed. You go at your own pace, not the group’s.
Eight fortnightly calls. An hour, same small group each time. The calls aren’t a repeat of the videos. They carry the practice and the application: trying things, talking about what happened when you did, and working out what to do about your next midwife appointment.
Six months of access. Longer than the calls run, deliberately. You’ll want some of this again closer to the birth.
Ten places. No more, because an hour with more than ten people isn’t a conversation.
Three things to know before you even consider it
Nobody is asked to tell their birth story. Not on the calls, not in the group, not ever. Most support for this starts by asking you to go back through it, and that’s exactly the thing that stops women asking for help.
There’s no WhatsApp group and no community space. Deliberately. You won’t be reading about anyone else’s worst day at 2am.
Every call has the same structure. You always know what’s coming, which means you can decide in advance how much of yourself to bring.
If your baby arrives before the calls finish
Expected, rather than a problem.
The live calls finish for you when your baby comes. You keep everything else for the rest of your six months: the content, the recordings of the calls you missed, the worksheets. And you can book a one to one with me afterwards at a reduced member rate.
You won’t be left paying for something you can no longer use.
What I won’t promise you
I won’t promise you a better birth. I can’t predict one.
What I can do is make sure you walk back in understanding why you’re like this, with techniques that fit you, and knowing what you want and what to say.
This isn’t therapy, and it isn’t a birth debrief. If what you want is to go through what happened in detail, properly, with someone who finally hears the whole thing, that’s individual trauma therapy, and I’d point you towards the right person rather than take your money for the wrong thing.
But they aren’t alternatives, and the order tends to matter. Trauma therapy asks a lot of you. It goes better when you already understand what your brain is doing, and when you’ve got something that works when it gets hard. That’s most of what the first two stages are.
Some women do this and find they don’t need anything else. Others do it and go into therapy afterwards on much firmer ground. Both are fine.
Who runs it
I’m Dr Natalie Cook, a Perinatal Clinical Psychologist and the founder of Little Steps Psychology Practice.
I worked as the lead Clinical Psychologist on one of the largest neonatal units in the country. I’ve seen what happens on the other side of that trauma with families having the worst weeks of their lives. I know what’s negotiable in those rooms and what isn’t, and I know how it feels afterwards when everyone else has moved on and you haven’t.
So I work on both: what’s happening in you, and what you’re walking back into.
Maternity services in this country are underfunded and the people working in them are exhausted. That matters, because the system isn’t an excuse for what happened to you. But it is an explanation. Women are not listened to, and some women far less than others. Both of those things are true at once, and you’re entitled to hear them both said out loud.
Who it’s for
Women and birthing people who are pregnant now, after a previous birth they found frightening or a stay on the neonatal unit, whose baby from that pregnancy is alive.
It isn’t the right place if you’re currently under a crisis team, if you’re pregnant after a loss, or if you’re in the middle of active trauma therapy elsewhere. There’s better help for all three, and I’ll point you to it if you ask.
The practical bits
Eight calls, fortnightly, at the same time each session. Six months of access to everything.
The on-demand content is yours from the day you join, and your fifty minutes with me happens within the first week.
Ten places, and a short application form before you join. I read every one myself.
The first round starts in spring 2027. Dates, times and cost are being finalised now, and the waiting list hears first.