Bloom

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About

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it## Inspiration

Postpartum recovery is often reduced to "sleep when the baby sleeps," while the real struggles go unspoken — physical warning signs dismissed as normal, moods no one checks in on, and a lack of anyone who understands what the first weeks actually feel like. This is made harder in Pakistan by stigma around discussing mental health and a lack of postpartum-specific resources close to home. I wanted to build something for the women of my own city, Rawalpindi, who don't always have someone checking in on them the way they check on their newborn.

What it does

Bloom gives new mothers:

Daily mood and sleep check-ins, visualized on a personal dashboard
A rule-based symptom checker that flags when something needs urgent medical attention versus what's normal postpartum recovery, backed by real CDC data
Community groups (#sleep-struggles, #feeding-help, #first-time-moms) with real-time chat, so no one has to go through this alone
A resource directory localized to Rawalpindi and Pakistan — real hospitals, real helplines, not generic international numbers that don't apply here

How we built it

Built with Next.js and Supabase (authentication, Postgres database, and real-time chat), styled with Tailwind CSS using a custom warm color palette designed to feel calming rather than clinical. All check-in and symptom data is tied to authenticated users with row-level security, so every mother's data stays private to her.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing genuine AI/ML ambition with medical safety was the biggest one — I initially considered a free-form AI symptom checker, but decided a clear, rule-based triage system was the responsible choice for a health-adjacent feature, since an LLM could hallucinate medical guidance. I also had to scope down some community features (like notifications and user-created groups) given the tight hackathon timeline, prioritizing a fully working core over a half-built stretch feature.

Accomplishments we're proud of

Localizing the resources tab to real Rawalpindi hospitals and Pakistani mental health helplines instead of defaulting to US resources — it made the project feel like it was actually built for my community, not just a generic template.

What we learned

How to balance ambition against a hard deadline, and that scoping down thoughtfully (with a clear "what's next" list) is more honest and more impressive than a rushed, broken feature.