Everyone's asking about the nursery. Nobody's asking about the two of you.
A day-and-a-half couples intensive for partners expecting a baby, and partners in the first two years of one.
Book a fit callThere is a great deal of preparation available for having a baby. Almost all of it is about the baby.
Meanwhile the thing most likely to buckle is the relationship between the two people doing it — usually somewhere around three in the morning, in week six, in an argument that isn't about what it's about. Sleep deprivation strips out your patience and your perspective and leaves the oldest version of each of you in charge.
This is preparation for that. Or, if you're already in it, repair for it.
Does this sound familiar?
If you're expecting
- You've read about sleep schedules and nothing about what happens between the two of you at 3am.
- One of you is already carrying most of the planning, and it hasn't even started.
- You're carrying a fear — about the birth, about money, about becoming your own mother or father — that you haven't said out loud.
- You've noticed you handle stress in opposite ways, and you're quietly wondering how that's going to go.
If the baby is here
- You are both exhausted, both doing a lot, and both quietly certain you're doing more.
- You snap at each other over things that wouldn't have registered two years ago.
- Intimacy has become something to negotiate, or something to avoid.
- One of you had a birth that didn't go the way it was meant to, and it has never been properly talked about.
- You love this baby, you miss the two of you, and you feel guilty about the second part.
- You are more like two people running a shift rota than a couple.
Why an intensive, for you specifically
You don't have weekly
A newborn and a weekly appointment are close to incompatible. Arranging childcare once, for an evening and a day, is a schedule you can actually keep — and it's why most couples in your position get no help at all.
This window closes and then reopens badly
What gets set down in the first year — who notices what, who gets to be tired, whose needs quietly stop counting — tends to harden into how the next decade runs. Naming it now is much easier than renegotiating it at year six.
Your material is live
You are not working from hypotheticals. You have last Tuesday. That makes the work faster and more honest than it will ever be again.
Both of you get seen
Most perinatal support is built around the birthing parent, for good reason, and the other one often goes twelve months without anyone asking how they are. Here you each get a 90-minute session of your own before the two of you are ever in a room together.
What you'll leave with
A name for the fight you keep having, and both halves of where it comes from. A plan each for the nights when you're past your limit. A first-year plan specific enough to act on — sleep, the mental load, visitors, intimacy, and how each of you will know when the other isn't okay, with the actual name and number of who to call. And the two of you back in the same conversation.
How it works
Before — about three weeks
A detailed assessment you each complete on your own. Then a 90-minute individual session each, before the two of you are ever in the room together. By the time you arrive, nobody is spending the first evening getting me up to speed.
The intensive — an evening and a full day
Three blocks of about three hours each.
- Evening. Where your patterns came from, and the cycle the two of you make together — drawn out and named.
- Next morning. Each of you does your own work while the other watches. This is often the block that changes things.
- That afternoon. The two of you as a team, and the plan you'll leave with.
After — six months
A workbook with two standing appointments: twenty minutes weekly, one dinner monthly. A follow-up session four to six weeks out, booked before you leave. And a three-month checkpoint you run yourselves.
Why a day and a half instead of a weekly hour
Weekly couples therapy works, and for many couples it's the right thing. But the hour has a structural problem. Most of it goes to catching up on the week. Something real surfaces at minute forty and has to be shut down, because there isn't time to tend what you'd open. Whatever you built on Tuesday meets a bad night on Thursday. And couples are on their best behaviour for fifty minutes — the pattern that actually runs your relationship shows up in hour six, when nobody is performing any more.
A longer format removes all four problems. Work that can't start in fifteen minutes can start after dinner and still be standing the next morning. The second block begins where the first ended. One of you can have forty-five minutes of individual work with the other watching. And nothing else is happening that day.
Being straight about the evidence: couple therapy has a strong research base, and emotionally focused therapy in particular has decades of trials behind it. Whether an intensive format outperforms weekly sessions has not been settled by head-to-head research, and I won't claim it has. What I will say is that this format solves specific problems the weekly format has — and if weekly work is the better fit for you, I'll tell you that on the call.
When this isn't the right thing
An intensive isn't the right next step if there is violence in the relationship, if either of you is afraid of the other, or if one of you couldn't be honest in a joint session without paying for it afterwards. It isn't right if there's an untreated addiction, if either of you is in acute crisis, or if one of you has privately decided to leave and is here to soften the landing.
None of that means nothing can be done — it means something else needs to happen first. Part of what you're paying for is the judgement to say so. If the assessment shows this isn't right, I'll tell you what I recommend instead and refund you according to the schedule in our agreement.
Common questions
Do we have to be in crisis?
No. The couples who get the most from this usually aren't.
What if only one of us really wants to do it?
More common than you'd think. Say it on the call rather than hiding it — sometimes we proceed with the difference named out loud, and sometimes something shorter is a better first step.
Will we be with other couples?
No. It's the two of you and me, the whole time.
What if we fall apart in the middle?
That's roughly the point. Falling apart with someone whose job is to help you put it back is different from falling apart in your kitchen at midnight.
Is it covered by insurance?
No. The intensive is private pay only, and I don't provide a superbill for it. If using insurance matters to you, weekly couples sessions are the better route and we can talk about that on the call.
What does it cost?
$2,200. That covers the written assessment, a 90-minute individual session for each of you, all three blocks, the workbook, and the follow-up session afterward.
Where do we have to be?
The intensive is in person in Mt. Juliet, just east of Nashville. I'm licensed in Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida.
What happens next
- A free consultation call. I'll tell you honestly whether this is the right next step.
- If it's a fit, you book your dates and I send the assessment.
- Your individual sessions, one each.
- The evening, then the full day.
- The follow-up, booked before you leave.
Or get in touch with a sentence about what's going on.
The intensive is held in person in Mt. Juliet, just east of Nashville. I'm licensed in Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida. $2,200· private pay only.