Postpartum mode, in depth.
After the baby is here, the app changes again. Less of it. Quieter. The features that are in postpartum mode are the ones I'm most worried about getting right — because the kinds of things worth tracking are also the kinds of things you do not want to feel like you're being tracked through.
Recovery tracking
A daily log for Megan. How she's feeling physically. Anything she'd want her midwife to know at the six-week visit. Anything she'd want her future self to read. Photos optional, attachments optional, free-write is the main input.
Only she reads it unless she shares it. The point is not data. The point is having a paper trail of how she actually felt, week by week, so the eventual question — how was your recovery? — has an answer she can look at instead of having to remember through the fog.
Dual-partner mood tracking
Both of us, every day. Two five-emoji scales. Two small notes. The trends page shows both lines side by side so we can see each other's trajectory.
I built this because of the part of my job that I do not write about much: PPD in mothers gets missed and PPD in partners gets missed twice. The screen never frames the tracking as monitoring. It frames it as noticing. If either of us dips for two weeks in a row, the app surfaces a small card with a suggestion to talk to someone — without naming what it thinks is happening.
Feeding log
Bottle or breast. Which side. How long. How much. Designed for one-handed operation, because that's the only way it'll get used. Last feed time always visible at the top so the question when did the baby last eat stops being a guess.
Sleep + diaper log
One screen, two logs. Sleep start, sleep stop, calculated duration. Diaper wet or dirty, time. Both feed into the trends view so we can answer how much sleep did the baby get in the last 24 hours as easily as we can answer how much sleep did either of us get in the last 24 hours.
Partner prompts
Small daily prompts. For me. Things a good doula would whisper if a doula could afford to live in our apartment. Take the night feed. Bring her water when you bring her the baby. Tell her one specific thing she did well today.
Some of these I wrote. Some of them came from doula books and from the postpartum nurses I trust most. None of them are notifications. They're a quiet checklist that shows up once a day.
Visit reminders
Same shared appointment system Megan used through pregnancy — prep notes, visit notes, follow-up, attachments — re-pointed at the postpartum check-ins and the pediatrician. The continuity is intentional. The screen looks the same, because it's the same screen.
The screens are smaller because the work is bigger.
We do not need an app to tell us how to love a newborn. We need an app that quietly keeps the receipts so the right question can be answered at the right appointment, and so the first slow dip in either of our moods doesn't go unnoticed for two weeks. That's all postpartum mode is. Six screens. A lot of love.