Dr Kerri Walster

Experience in perinatal health

I first found my way into perinatal and early years mental health somewhat by accident. In the final year of my clinical psychology training, around eleven years ago, I had hoped to work in a specialist adolescent services after really enjoying a CAMHS placement. Instead, I was offered a specialist placement in a 0–5 service — and discovered an area of work that I came to love.

I stayed in the service for the following five years. I still fondly remember, cycling around Camden to visit families in their homes, getting to know parents and their babies at such a significant point in their lives, as well as being part of a fantastic team of skilled clinicians who I really learnt a lot from.

One of the things this work taught me early on was how many different experiences can exist alongside one another when we become parents. Welcoming a baby can be incredibly precious, but it can also bring uncertainty, anxiety, low mood, changes in our relationships and sense of self, and questions about whether we are getting things “right”. Becoming responsible for a small and vulnerable person can also bring us unexpectedly close to our own childhood experiences and to the ways in which we ourselves were parented.

Over the years, I have worked with mothers and fathers individually, with couples, with parents and babies together, and in parent groups. I later went on to establish and lead a perinatal pathway within the NHS and have provided consultation and support to midwives, health visitors and other therapists working with families during the perinatal period. More recently, and since having my own two children, I have also worked in private practice.

Within The Oak Tree’s perinatal pathway, I can particularly offer support During Pregnancy, After Birth, and For Partners.

What drew me to this work?

What began as an unexpected placement became an area I feel deeply connected to. I think there is something very particular about the transition into parenthood. It can contain enormous love and joy while also bringing vulnerability, doubt, loss of confidence, difficult feelings and parts of ourselves or our histories that we weren’t expecting to encounter.

No one is immune from the emotional ups and downs that becoming and being a parent can bring. I have always felt it is a privilege to be invited alongside individuals, couples and families during this period — particularly when their experience doesn’t look or feel the way they had imagined it would.

Becoming a parent myself has added another layer to my understanding of this. Clinical training gives us many useful ways of thinking about babies, children, relationships and development; parenthood has also taught me, from the inside, something about big emotions, uncertainty, competing needs, and the confidence — and lack of confidence — that can come with caring for children.

How do I work?

I work integratively, drawing particularly on psychodynamic, systemic and attachment-based approaches. This means I am interested not only in what someone is experiencing now, but also in their relationships, the wider context around them, and how earlier experiences may be shaping how they feel about themselves and their relationships today.

My approach is warm, flexible and collaborative. There isn’t one right way to experience pregnancy or parenthood, and there isn’t one way of doing therapy that will suit everybody. I adapt how I work according to the person, couple or family in front of me and what feels most helpful for what they are bringing.

A little more about me

Outside of work, I am a parent to two children and enjoy spending time with family and friends. I am happiest when I can spend plenty of time outdoors and love travelling when time allows.

I’m also a keen reader — both professionally and for pleasure — and one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon is slowly wandering around an art gallery, wondering about the person behind a piece of work and what they might have been thinking, feeling or trying to communicate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have always been curious about people’s inner worlds.