Inspiration
The postpartum period is often described as joyful, yet many mothers experience it as isolating, overwhelming, and unsupported. While pregnancy is closely monitored, care frequently drops off once a mother leaves the hospital. Our team was deeply motivated by this gap in care and by stories of new mothers navigating recovery, emotional changes, and uncertainty largely on their own. We wanted to build something that felt reassuring, empathetic, and continuously present during the most vulnerable weeks after birth.
What it does
The Fourth Trimester is a personalized postpartum wellness companion that adapts to each user’s recovery journey. Based on birth type, days postpartum, and wellness check-ins, the app delivers daily guidance, recovery tasks, nutrition support, and emotional well-being prompts. Rather than offering generic advice, the platform evolves alongside the user to provide relevant, timely, and compassionate support after hospital discharge.
How we built it
We developed the frontend using React and TypeScript, focusing on a calm, intuitive patient dashboard that would not overwhelm users. The core of the project is powered by Google Gemini AI, which we integrated securely using an API key to generate real-time, personalized guidance.
To ensure safety and reliability, we worked hard to implement a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline. This approach allows the AI to ground its responses in trusted postpartum health resources instead of relying solely on generative output. The system retrieves relevant medical context first, then uses Gemini to produce supportive, non-diagnostic guidance tailored to the user’s postpartum stage.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was implementing the RAG-based AI model responsibly within the limited hackathon timeframe. Designing a system that balanced personalization with medical safety required careful thought, testing, and iteration. We also faced challenges integrating the Gemini API smoothly while ensuring environment variables and API keys were handled securely. Making sure AI outputs remained empathetic, accurate, and appropriately cautious was one of the most demanding parts of the project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Successfully integrating Google Gemini AI into a working application
- Implementing a RAG pipeline grounded in trusted postpartum resources
- Building a personalized patient dashboard that adapts by birth type and recovery timeline
- Creating a healthcare-focused AI system with safety and empathy at its core
What we learned
Through this project, we learned how critical responsible AI design is in healthcare. We gained hands-on experience integrating AI APIs, managing secure environment variables, and structuring data for personalization. Most importantly, we learned how thoughtful design and grounded AI can create meaningful, human-centered healthcare tools.
What's next for The Fourth Trimester
Looking ahead, we plan to expand the RAG knowledge base, add clinician dashboards for midwives and healthcare providers, introduce mental health screening tools, and integrate wearable data for deeper recovery insights. Our long-term goal is to make postpartum care continuous, accessible, and compassionate for every mother.
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