Annie Peralty
RP · Fertility, loss and surrogacy
Infertility, donor conception and surrogacy, with lived experience.
Openings this week
What we help with / Fertility counselling
Fertility treatment asks you to hope on a schedule.
Counselling for infertility, IVF and IUI, donor conception and surrogacy, and the decision about when to stop. Virtual across Ontario, or in person in Toronto.
Booking because a clinic asked you to? That is implications counselling, a different service for donor conception and surrogacy, with documentation sent to your clinic. Go there instead.
What fertility counselling is, and who provides it in Ontario
Fertility counselling is talk therapy for the psychological load of trying to conceive: the treatment cycles, the waiting, the decisions, and the grief that has no funeral. In Ontario it is provided by Registered Social Workers (RSW) and Registered Psychotherapists (RP), both regulated professions with public registers you can search. Some fertility clinics have a counsellor on staff; most people see someone independently, because clinic counselling is usually brief and tied to consent paperwork.
At Toronto Therapy Practice, several of our therapists specialize in fertility. You'll find them below. Sessions are available virtually across Ontario, with in-person sessions in Toronto with select therapists. Fees are $175 to $200 for 50 minutes depending on the therapist, with a free 15 minute consultation first. Most workplace insurance plans in Ontario cover sessions with an RSW or RP.
You might recognize this
Things we often hear in a first session
"My whole life is organized around a two week wait."
"Everyone else got pregnant by accident."
"I can't tell if I still want this or if I just can't bear to give up."
"My body feels like it's betraying me."
"I don't know how to be around my friend's baby."
"We only talk about ovulation now."
"I'm grieving something I've never had."
"I don't know how we'd know when to stop."
Infertility produces a particular kind of grief: recurring, unwitnessed, and with no object anyone else can see. It arrives monthly, on a schedule, and the people around you usually have no idea it is happening. That is part of why it wears people down so specifically, and why general grief support often misses.
The other thing fertility treatment does is turn your relationship into a logistics operation. Sex becomes scheduled, conversation becomes protocol, and one of you often copes by researching while the other copes by not talking about it. That is not a sign the relationship is failing. It is a common split, and it responds well to being named.
What the work looks like
Specific, and shorter than people expect.
What we do
- Help you separate the medical decisions from the emotional ones, so you can make each with a clearer head
- Work on the two week wait specifically, because it has its own shape and its own tools
- Name the grief that has no ritual attached to it, including losses nobody else knew about
- Help you decide how much to tell family, friends or work, and give you language for the questions you keep getting
- Work with the two of you together where the strain is between you, not only inside you
- Talk honestly about stopping when you're ready, including what a good life looks like if this doesn't work
What we don't do
- Tell you to relax, or repeat that stress causes infertility
- Suggest it will happen when you stop trying
- Treat donor conception, surrogacy or adoption as a consolation prize
- Push you toward another cycle, or away from one. That decision is yours
- Require you to have a diagnosis, or to be in active treatment, to come
Who works with this
Several of our therapists specialize in fertility. Pick whoever you'd rather talk to.
Kate Bailey
MSW RSW · EMDR and trauma
When treatment or loss has left trauma behind. EMDR.
Openings this week
Ruth Diemer
MSW RSW · 30 years
Thirty years. Couples and family strain through treatment.
Openings this week
Alana Jackson
MSW RSW · 20 years, including Mount Sinai
Infertility and loss, with honesty and a little humour.
Waitlist, about 3 weeks
Mila Arsenijevic
MSW RSW · Founder, 18 years, including 10 at Mount Sinai
Treatment decisions, identity and the strain on couples.
Openings this week
Caroline Nikiel
MSW RSW · 11 years, hospital practice
Managing big emotions through treatment, and support for partners.
Openings this week
Reading on this
Everything we have written on infertility, IVF and family building.
Fertility
Pregnancy After Infertility: When the Anxiety Doesn't End
You finally got the positive test. After months or years of trying, after failed cycles, after loss, after wondering if this would ever happen.
20 May 2026
Fertility
Surrogacy Assessments in Ontario: What to Expect
What happens in a surrogacy psychological assessment in Ontario: who attends, what gets asked, what the report says, and how to prepare.
27 Apr 2026
Fertility
How to Support a Partner Going Through Fertility Treatments
Your partner is doing the injections. The blood draws. The ultrasounds. The retrievals. The transfers. The waiting.
24 Apr 2026
Fertility
Secondary Infertility: Why It's Hard and How Therapy Helps
Secondary infertility is about half of all infertility cases, and among the least acknowledged. Why it is uniquely hard, and what therapy addresses.
22 Apr 2026
Fertility
When to See a Fertility Therapist (Not Just a Fertility Clinic)
What a fertility therapist does that a fertility clinic does not, the signs it is worth booking, and how to tell a specialist from a generalist.
20 Apr 2026
Fertility
The Emotional Toll of Unexplained Infertility
Why unexplained infertility is often harder to cope with than a diagnosis, what the research shows, and what fertility therapy actually addresses.
16 Apr 2026
You don't have to be in crisis to want help with this.
Most people book because they're tired of carrying it quietly, not because something went wrong. Fifteen minutes, free, no pressure to book anything after it.