Inspiration:
According to research, 85% of mothers experience postpartum blues after giving birth. This common emotional response can manifest as mood swings, anxiety, and feelings of sadness, affecting nearly 3 out of 4 women in the weeks following childbirth. Many new mothers find themselves navigating a complex web of emotions and physical changes, yet access to mental health resources can be limited. Studies show that only 15% of women with postpartum depression receive the help they need, leaving a significant number struggling in silence. That’s why we decided to create an app that can support women during this time and help them navigate the emotional journey of postpartum depression.
What it does
Our app, Bloom, offers a comforting and safe environment to nurture the mental well-being of mothers. Bloom allows mothers to choose from a selection of meditation options to take anywhere from 10 seconds to 15 minutes to find their inner peace. They can also jot down any thoughts in their own virtual journal through the app and read through dozens of positive affirmations. Throughout the day, Bloom will send self-care reminders through a notification system, ensuring that mothers take the time to take care of themselves. Finally, Bloom offers a consolidated hub for mothers to access educational articles, motivational videos, and uplifting podcasts, allowing them to connect to real stories and feel less alone during their postpartum journey.
How we built it
We brushed our React skills by watching a few tutorials on Youtube. Because ExpoGo was also new to use, we read the documentation and watched other tutorials on how the deployment would work on our phones. We used Github to practice good version control. Features were made via branches and were merged to deployment and then merged to main at the end. We started with a bare layout of the screens and developed features regarding the screens following an iterative process of creating features, testing, and pushing.
Challenges we ran into
We had issues with Expo Go since it was our first time using it. Sometimes the app would not render on our phones, or render differently on different devices. At times, this made it difficult to debug the features we were implementing.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of our mission and how we could address the needs of mothers during a difficult time in their lives, ensuring they have the support they need, especially considering how often mothers are overlooked postpartum.
What we learned
We learned how to use Expo Go for app development purposes because we don’t all have access to Macbooks and its IOS development features. We also got the opportunity to hone in our skills in React and Typescript, along with using git and GitHub through the software development lifecycle.
What's next for Bloom
We’d want to implement a community tab that allows other mothers to post on discussion boards offering insights and advice for other mothers, fostering community.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.