Therapy for women navigating infertility, the postpartum trenches and the very real weight of modern motherhood.
With a therapist who gets it, because you were never meant to figure it out alone.
There is no manual for this.
Not for the month you find out IVF didn’t work again. Not for the intrusive thoughts that show up with the positive pregnancy test. Not for the moment you realize you’ve completely lost yourself somewhere between the school pickup line and the third load of laundry.
Maybe you’re navigating infertility and wondering how much more disappointment you can take.
Maybe you’re carrying the mental load of an entire household and quietly disappearing inside your own life.
Maybe you’ve become the default parent, the project manager, the family calendar, the emotional support person, the keeper of everyone’s needs – while wondering when someone is going to notice yours.
Maybe you’re pregnant after infertility and just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Maybe you’re raising tiny humans during a time that feels increasingly uncertain and wondering how you’re supposed to hold fierce hope and fear at the same time.
Whatever brought you here, I want you to hear this:
The problem isn’t that you’re doing motherhood wrong.
The problem is that women and mothers are often expected to hold everything together inside systems that don’t actually support them.
And carrying that much, for that long, comes at a cost.
If you’re holding it together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside…you’re in the right place.
Modern Motherhood Was Never Meant to Be a Solo Sport
Somewhere along the way, we began to believe that impossible expectations were the only way to be a “good” mom.
Be present.
Be grateful.
Be ambitious (but not too ambitious).
Be patient.
Be informed.
Be emotionally available.
Be selfless.
Don’t lose yourself.
Don’t lose your marriage.
Don’t lose your mind.
And do all of that without breaking a sweat and while maintaining a smile on your face.
It makes perfect sense why so many women find themselves exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, resentful and disconnected. Why so many find themselves wondering why they can’t seem to get ahead no matter how hard they try.
What I see every day in my work isn’t a lack of resilience—it’s women carrying far more than any one person was ever meant to carry alone.
I’m Ashley Germann LISW-S, PMH-C, therapist, Fair Play Facilitator, reproductive mental health specialist and founder of Modern Motherhood Therapy.
I specialize in the full arc of reproductive and maternal mental health. I help women and birthing people throughout Ohio navigate infertility, IVF, pregnancy loss, pregnancy after infertility, motherhood burnout, the mental load of parenting, and the complicated reality of raising families in a world that often asks too much of them. I work with women who are smart and self-aware and still struggling, because those two things are not mutually exclusive.
I’m also a mother—which means I’m not sitting across from you with a clipboard and a detached clinical gaze. I’m in it too. I know what it’s like to love something so much it terrifies you, to carry more than feels fair, and to wonder if this is just what it is now or if something can actually shift.
My approapch is warm, relational, depth-oriented and refreshingly free of toxic positivity. This means we’re not going to spend 50 minutes on the surface of things. We’re going to figure out what’s actually driving what you’re feeling, where it comes from, and what it would take for something to genuinely shift. Not just coping. Actually shifting.
Because something you don’t need is another person telling you to practice self-care.
Sometimes you need a space where you can finally tell the truth about how hard this has been. Even the parts you’re not “supposed” to say out loud.
If you’re finding yourself looking around and wondering “what the f*ck have I gotten myself into,” you’re in the right spot.
Where you are matters—here’s where I can meet you.
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Navigating Your Fertility Era
Is the whole world getting pregnant around you and every month you’re squinting to see if maybe, just maybe there is actually a faint line on that test? Are you about to scream if one more person looks at you and says “well at least you can get pregnant!” as if that’s supposed to actually make you feel better?
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Managing the Mental Load of Motherhood
Before kids it all seemed fine but now you are suffocating under the mounting pressure of the mental to-do lists, the planning, the organizing and you’ve become resentful that your partner is not recognizing just how many cards you are holding?
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Raising Tiny Humans
Struggling to find your parenting values in a sea of “expert” opinions and automatic neural responses? Is your idea of self care getting to eat a French fry from the bottom of the takeout bag and have it still be warm-ish? Shocked by how many times you’ve Googled “mom rage”?
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Pregnancy & Postpartum
Instead of the rumored “pregnancy glow” you ended up with acne for the first time in over a decade, parts of your body you didn’t even know existed hurt and you haven’t kept a meal down in weeks? Did your friends help you craft a perfect baby registry, but forgot to tell you about the sometimes graphic intrusive thoughts that flood your brain?
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Pregnancy Loss & Termination
You’re just coming up for air after hearing the doctor say there is no heartbeat? Maybe you were just told there is something wrong with the baby and you’re about to be faced with impossible choices and you aren’t sure what the right decision is for your family? Need a safe, nonjudgmental place to process your abortion?
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Birth Trauma and NICU Parents
Your birth preferences went out the window and you’re grieving the loss of how you thought it would be and navigating what feels like a traumatic birth experience? You’re struggling to process just how many wires are attached to your baby and nobody prepared you to have to advocate for your newborn while you’re still healing?
Modern Motherhood Therapy exists because the mental health of women and birthing people in the reproductive years is specific, layered and chronically underserved. Generic therapy can help. Specialized therapy–with someone who has trained extensively in this space, lives inside it and is genuinely curious about you–goes somewhere different, somewhere deeper.
You shouldn’t have to spend your session explaining infertility terminology.
You shouldn’t have to convince someone that the mental load is real.
You shouldn’t have to translate the experience of pregnancy after loss.
And you shouldn’t have to justify why you’re exhausted when everyone around you keeps telling you that you should be grateful.
This isn’t a practice that treats motherhood as a footnote to someone’s “real” presenting problems. It’s the whole thing. And you deserve care that treats it that way.
“If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”
— Glennon Doyle, Untamed
Therapy for Moms Throughout Ohio
Modern Motherhood Therapy provides in-person sessions in the Columbus-area and virtual therapy throughout Ohio.
This means specialized support can fit into your actual life, not just the version of your life where you somehow have unlimited childcare, unlimited energy, and three uninterrupted hours in the middle of the day. (And honestly, if you’ve figured out where that version of life exists, please let me know!)
You Deserve Support Before You’re Falling Apart
One las thing before you talk yourself out of reaching out.
You do not need to be in crisis to deserve support.
You don’t have to wait until you’re completely burned out.
You don’t have to wait until your relationship is hanging by a thread.
You don’t have to wait until the anxiety becomes unbearable.
Therapy isn’t just for people who are falling apart.
It’s also for people who are holding everything together and desperately need somewhere to put it down.
Let’s make some space for you.
