Giving birth to a child is the most wonderful, and at the same time, the most stressful experience a woman goes through.

Every new mom is excited during her pregnancy, watching how her body changes while a new life grows inside her.

This is a wonderful journey, but not many women talk about the issues they face after becoming mothers.

Childbirth recovery and postpartum health are two crucial issues that not many doctors offer advice on dealing with. Having faced this problem themselves, Sara and Jon Bates decided to lend struggling women a helping hand.

MamaMend was created to offer new moms personalized health advice, information, and high-quality professional care after childbirth. While almost every available resource provides information and advice on child development, there aren’t many explaining what a woman herself goes through and how to deal with the situation.

Continue reading about the mom-hero that made other moms feel good about themselves.

A Woman in the Lead

Sara's interest in the female body goes back to her early childhood years. She dreamed of entering the field of obstetrics and gynecology and learning more about female reproductive health. As life advanced, she went in a different direction, but she somehow found a way to incorporate her interest in female health with technology.

An engineer with a Master’s in Information Systems, Sara Bates draws inspiration from personal experience. She started her career in the field of foreign exchange and had a bright future ahead as co-founder and data scientist of Bates Analytics Inc.

Sara is a passionate community-builder and co-organized the Boulder chapter of Women in Machine Learning and Data Science. She is a fierce advocate fighting for the advancement of women’s health using her professional skills.

One of her main qualities is combining her sales and marketing experience with that of data science to provide the best possible service to customers.

Joining Forces

Jon Bates has received his Bachelor’s in Management from MIT and went on to round up his education at Northwestern University with a Master’s in Predictive Analytics. He pursued a career in developing and using trading systems and offered to share his expertise by speaking at Big Data conferences throughout Europe and U.S.

Jon is a competition-winning data scientist with a solid professional background which includes being Vice President of Fundamental Advisors and Partner at First New York Securities. He went on to join forces with his wife Sara at Bates Analytics, Inc., where he also acted as a co-founder and a data scientist.

Inspiration Strikes When Least Expected

However, life sometimes takes its natural course and decides the future. When the Bates’ chose to expand their family, Sara was overwhelmed by the information about expecting mothers, and she read everything she could find to prepare for becoming a mom.

Once she gave birth to her child, all the information she could find shifted the attention to the child, without much help for the mother herself. The number of women who experience maternal health complications is very high, but not many women seek professional help due to many reasons.

Sara wanted to do more and take some of the burden off new moms’ shoulders, and so she did.

New Mom Support

There is a constant lack of knowledge on postpartum conditions, possible available treatments, and difficulties in accessing care. Practitioners are investing a lot of time and effort into increasing the awareness of the importance of women’s health post-childbirth, but mainly to no avail.

Sara and Jon decided to roll up their sleeves and do something about it. Of course, Sara was the inspiration, the story, and the face behind MamaMend, while Jon took care of the technical part.

MamaMend offers childbirth recovery and postpartum support while delivering personalized support and connections to expert practitioners and evidence-based information.

MamaMend guides new moms through post-birth health complications like breastfeeding struggles, perinatal mood disorders, and much more. Identifying the symptoms, conditions, and treatment is often complex, but MamaMend offers the support new moms need.

MamaMend to the Rescue

The platform connects moms to practitioners that can help them with their condition. All you need to do is answer a few questions on the issue, and MamaMend will offer a choice of three practitioners that match your needs. Once you decide on one, you can go ahead and schedule your appointment to get the care you need.

Not many are aware that the conditions from the postpartum period may become chronic, so immediate attention and treatment are a must. MamaMend offers women the choice of in-person or virtual care in finding the best practitioner that will help them.

It is also a platform that educates moms on their health. An essential component of the platform is the week-by-week guide for moms through their childbirth recovery. Mothers are offered advice on what is a normal condition, what is not normal, and who to connect with if they need care - all this is backed up by evidence from experience.

Fortifying the Finances

MamaMend was founded as a private company in January 2018, with headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. The company managed to raise a total funding amount of $120,000 over one pre-seed round in July 2018. MamaMend is backed by two investors - Techstars and Metlife Digital Accelerator.

One of MamaMend's major competitors is The SnapBack, a postpartum digital assistant with a non-judgmental and inclusive community. It has very similar features with MamaMend like useful resources for the mother and the baby. The main difference between these two apps is that MamaMend is completely free and has no in-app purchases.

A Simple Support Platform with Huge Impact

The app ranks number one in most of the postpartum health-related search terms. There are over 90,000 monthly web users, and most of them come from organic search traffic. Almost all the traffic is in the United States, but some site traffic has been noticed in Ireland and Belgium.

The primary team consists of the founders and several mental health experts and advisors who work on the platform's content, ensuring every piece of information given to moms is accurate and supported by evidence. Since it is a relatively new company, it is expected that it may expand in the future and offer even more services and information.

MamaMend has taken care that new mothers are not to be burdened with finances during one of their most difficult times when they need the help of a specialist. It is hard enough that they are dealing with the stress of becoming a mother and at the same time trying to figure out what is wrong with their body.

MamaMend to Right the Wrongs

With two employees and around six maternal health experts and advisors, MamaMend's ratings are rather high. It is praised for being one of the few apps that's focused on both the emotional and physical aspects of female health.

One of the satisfied users states: "I love this app honestly, it doesn't just talk about the baby, it makes me feel, as a mom, that the changes that happened to me are also valid! And it gives a lot of good info in the articles." - Sofi Alpizar.

Kudos to Sara and Jon for taking the initiative to be the first platform that not only connects women with practitioners but also educates and guides them through every step of their daily postpartum life. They are offering many women the needed support to help them understand their bodies and make the right choice in taking good care of their health.