“While I deeply value and acknowledge the many benefits of our current healthcare system, I believe there are additional essential supports that parents in this country both need and deserve. My goal is to empower and nurture the identity shifts, mood changes, and the real, raw moments of becoming a parent — so you can feel like yourself again while growing into someone new.
Children and parents deserve cradling as they grow and change,”
-Dr Heather Buxton MD
Child, Adolescent and Perinatal Psychiatrist and Founder of Cradled Psychiatry
Cradled Psychiatry was born from a truth I lived as I struggled to balance my career and parenting (“the cradle”)
Parenthood is full of opposites—and we are expected to hold them all. And often without enough support. We give birth and there is a societal shift away from the mother to her baby/babies. Parents are cradling their children as they navigate complicated emotions and identify shifts.
Joy and grief. Presence and ambition. Exhaustion and awe.
Cradled Psychiatry has grown from the idea that all parents navigate competing values and roles that can sometimes feel at odds.We’re often stretched between who we were, who we’re becoming, and what our children need. Parents deserve and need support as they honor those paradoxes and navigate these evolving identities.
The personal why behind Cradled Psychiatry
This picture always brings tears to my eyes. It was taken during a time when I was balancing my child psychiatry fellowship with life as a new parent to my post-NICU baby. I was fortunate to have some flexibility—4 weeks where I could work from home after most of my maternity leave was spent in the NICU—but honestly, it still wasn’t enough. The reality is, no amount of flexibility can fully prepare you for the immense challenges of early parenthood.
I’ve personally felt the constant push and pull—between my career and my family, between wanting to grow our family and facing pregnancy complications, between the unexpected struggles of parenting and the overwhelming costs of childcare. Even as a doctor—someone who has trained within the very medical system that is supposed to provide guidance—there were moments when I felt lost. And if it was confusing for me, I knew it had to be even more challenging for others.
As a child psychiatrist, I know how valuable it is to have an outside perspective. And yet, I struggled to find the support I was looking for in the standard medical setting. I yearned for a space that would hold me, my baby, and my entire family unit in mind. That’s why Cradled Psychiatry exists—because parents shouldn’t have to feel alone in the most important job of their lives.
Therapy, coaching, education, screening and treatment of perinatal and postpartum mood disorders- Cradled Psychiatry is here for you and your entire family.