Building Confidence, Not Click Bait
How I turned my postpartum anxiety into an app for new parents
Oma is currently in Beta for iOS and Android. You can sign up for an invite here.
I had an uneventful pregnancy — every test was fine, I had normal morning sickness, my feet were really swollen. A week after my due date, I went to the doctor, hoping they’d induce me so I wouldn’t have to be pregnant another day.
And yet, when the doctor told me that the baby’s amniotic fluid was low and that I needed to head to the hospital in the next few hours to be induced, it was still a bit of shock.
Thus began 16 hours of labor only to result in an unplanned c-section because the baby’s heart rate was high, I had developed a fever, and the baby was showing no signs of descending after 2 hours of pushing. I was rolled into the operating room and then, suddenly, my daughter, Noa, arrived.
She was wonderful and I was in a lot of pain.
My Postpartum Experience
A week after Noa was born, I woke up at 4am with a splitting headache. 24 hours later I still had a headache and couldn’t sleep and so I called the doctor, who told me to come in to check my blood pressure.
An hour later, I was on my way back to the same Labor & Delivery Unit I’d just given birth in a week ago.
“How many weeks are you?” The receptionist asked.
“I’m not…I gave birth and my doctor says I have postpartum preeclampsia,” I said.
“Oh…yes. Then just take a seat over there.”
I sat down next to a Hasidic couple, who weren’t the same Hasidic couple I’d sat next to while waiting for my induction. But they certainly looked identical.
I spent the next three days in a room, overlooking central park — this time from the 5th floor instead of the 7th. A machine took my blood pressure every 30 minutes and an IV of magnesium gave me an even worse headache. Finally, I was discharged and I rushed home to see Noa.
But the experience hung over me. I had to see a cardiologist for a clean bill of health but I couldn’t go until 6 weeks after giving birth. If my symptoms persisted after that date, my illness would be changed to “High Blood Pressure.” And if not, I would still have had “Postpartum Preeclampsia.”
In the meantime, my incision started causing problems. I was on antibiotics and taking trips to the doctor every few days to check on its progress and have little parts popped open and drained. It hurt, a lot.
When I finally saw the cardiologist it was decided that I had indeed had postpartum preeclampsia and I was fine for now. However, it was highly likely this would happen again if I got pregnant and so I would need to be more closely monitored in the future.
Postpartum Anxiety begins to set in…
It was now January, Noa was two months old, all the medical events were behind me, I had braved it all with grace, and at that point, I started to panic.
Going outside was overwhelming — warm clothing to pick, stroller to open, baby to carry down the stairs — what if I fell? What if Noa got cold? What if I wanted to go into a store where the stroller wouldn’t fit?
I wasn’t depressed. I was finally feeling OK after weeks of stressful complications. And I was actually incredibly happy spending time with Noa. At the same time, I was exhausted by my own thoughts.
I had a complete breakdown when my husband needed to go on a two day trip for work. I realized something wasn’t right and I decided to get some help. I then learned had Postpartum Anxiety.
Why was I anxious?
Through therapy, I was able to attribute my anxiety to three main causes.
#1 Traumatic Birth Experience
My experience is nowhere near the worst of traumatic birth experiences. But it was still really rough. But I thought admitting that would make it real and scary and rob me of all the toughness I’d built up to deal with it.
I came to realize however, that until I really admitted it to myself, I would always be in a state of constant alert, worrying that something would go wrong again.
#2 Binary models of being a parent
I had grown up believing there were two type of mothers — those who stayed at home with their kids and trailblazing working moms who did anything for their careers.
After Noa was born, I was left feeling like I wanted to be both or somewhere in the middle or something else entirely. I did not fit my own paradigm and I felt buffeted between the two extremes as I tried to identify solely with one or the the other.
What I have come to realize is that being a parent is a spectrum — you can choose where you go and you can also move. A choice you make in the first year of your child’s life does not define the rest of yours.
#3 Parents feel like they need a degree to make any decision
Our society builds up the consequence of even the smallest parenting decisions. Everything is significant and possibly disastrous. At the same time, every option appears to be the wrong one.
Have you ever read a parenting article that says, “It’s a personal choice whether you do x or y and both are perfectly good options”?
The truth is that most parenting decisions are inconsequential and very few are irreversible. And you run the risk of missing the truly important ones if you try to keep up with every single small one.
While causes #1 and #2 might have been specific to my experience, I am by no means the only person to experience those. And cause #3 applies to all new parents. I came to realize that even if all these events hadn’t happened in this way, I’d still be prone to anxiety just being a new parent in our society.
In fact, 17% of new moms experience anxiety in the postpartum period, even higher than the 15% who experience depression.
How technology makes it worse
Unfortunately, most parenting technology feeds into the anxiety rather than trying to help you. It makes business sense — it’s clickbait. No one is going to click on an article titled, “Whatever you do is probably fine.”
Take this blog post on the Bump, one of the most popular pregnancy and parenting websites:
Without this article, you will have the wrong things for your baby. Even the title is slightly panic-inducing. “No One Tells You About” makes it sound like there’s some secret you’re not in on but you must find it out.
You read the article, buy an item or feel guilty that you didn’t, and click through three other articles trying to quiet your anxieties about being a parent.
What if technology tried to help?
What if technology could point you in the right direction based on what matters to you? What if it told you not to worry about certain decisions? What if it knew you had one of those actually important decisions coming up and offered you a helpful breakdown of the options and why people chose one or the other?
What if it were personalized, always a step ahead, encouraging you, and connecting you and your partner in your parenting journey? What if it made you more confident in your parenting rather than less?
What if all this was in your phone, delivered through the warm, fuzzy persona of the grandma we all wish lived nearby?
This is what I am building to change how parenting technology works.
Meet Oma, the AI-powered grandma for your growing family
Oma is an app that provides personalized advice for new parents and parents-to-be. It’s aware of all the doctors’ visits, milestones, and what you can use when. It syncs data between you and your partner so that everyone is always in the loop.
It can even remind you that your baby carrier can now be used front facing or help you build a babyproofing list that actually fits your home’s potential dangers.
After months of iterating on prototypes with new parents, I’m excited to announce that Oma is now in Beta.
My hope is that Oma can help reduce the pressure and up the confidence of every new parent.
Get an invite to the Beta
New parents or new parents-to-be can sign up for an invite here.
Oma is available for iOS and Android.
