The Moments That Change Us
A Father’s Day reflection on the birth of my son, the seven years to get there, and how the journey inspired a mission to improve maternal health.
In an instant, one of the happiest moments of my life turned into one of the scariest. Two of the most important people in my life were rushed by a team of nurses in opposite directions to critical care. I have never felt more helpless.
Not even 10 minutes prior, we had welcomed our son Kenzo, born after the culmination of a seven-year journey through every level of fertility treatment to eventual parenthood. And, at that moment, I risked losing both him and my partner, Christine.
No smooth sailing for us
My path to parenthood shaped the better part of my 30's and was also the inspiration that led me to co-found Bloomlife. Like many people, I naively assumed starting a family would be easy. As it turns out, humans aren’t always efficient at procreating. The odds of a healthy couple successfully conceiving any given month is less than 25%. Upwards of 18% of couples struggle to either conceive or sustain a pregnancy. Christine and I fell squarely in that unfortunate group.
Over seven years, Christine and I experienced multiple miscarriages before turning to round after round of failed fertility treatments. Two rounds of IUI. Two rounds of IVF. One IVF turned into IUI. One more round of IVF. And then another “one more round” of IVF, the final round that led to Kenzo.
We made it out of the first trimester for the first time, but there was no smooth sailing in this pregnancy. While Christine felt physically fine, her pregnancy played out like a medical student’s final exam.
Two rounds of IUI. Two rounds of IVF. One IVF turned into IUI. One more round of IVF. And then another “one more round” of IVF, the final round that led to Kenzo.
Over the course of her pregnancy, she developed placental complications, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and preterm premature rupture of the membrane before finally delivering Kenzo at 34 weeks. Post delivery, Christine suffered a severe postpartum hemorrhage that required emergency surgery and a blood transfusion. After the birth, Kenzo was rushed in one direction — to the neonatal intensive care unit. Christine was rushed in the other — to the operating room.
Our story is one of many. We’re the lucky ones.
While Christine and Kenzo both survived (thanks in no small part to the amazing medical staff at Kaiser Permanente), the sad truth is that if her pregnancy had happened in many other parts of the world, including many areas with in the US, the outcome may have been very different.
High-risk pregnancies and pregnancy complications are on the rise, globally. Access to care is increasingly a problem with 50% of the counties in the US lacking a single OBGYN or hospitals with maternity wards, let alone neonatal intensive care units to support a preterm baby. Healthcare providers are doing the best they can with antiquated tools, limited information, and incomplete science.
While birth outcomes are the easiest measuring stick for how we are failing women and babies, the stress and feeling of disempowerment that expectant moms may experience due to lack of information or agency in prenatal care can be equally negative. Despite having a PhD in biomedical engineering, I had so many unanswered questions during our time trying to conceive and throughout the pregnancy. Information from doctors felt incomplete and information online was confusing, non-specific, or poorly referenced.
Birth outcomes are the easiest measuring stick for how we are failing women and babies, but the stress and feeling of disempowerment that expectant moms may experience due to lack of information or agency in prenatal care can be equally negative.
For example, I’ll never forget the time we received an email from our doctor after the 20-week anatomical check sharing that Christine had velamentous cord insertion and needed to do a repeat ultrasound. Having never heard of this condition, a quick Google search found 50% of undiagnosed velamentous cord insertions end in stillbirth! What outcomes happen in diagnosed cases…? No answers could be found.
On a mission
My long and painful journey to parenthood inspired Bloomlife and our current mission to develop remote prenatal care solutions that combine a clinically validated prenatal wearable, pregnancy app, and cloud-based data analytics. By extending care into the home, we not only increase access to care and reassure and empower moms with information previously stuck in hospitals, but we also aggregate data to help doctors better identify modifiable risk factors and prevent pregnancy complications.
The role that technology can play in changing our lives is all around us. At Bloomlife, we believe it’s time to start applying that technology to where it matters most, saving thousands of families from the heartache of pregnancy loss by supporting moms and babies during the most critical time of life.
At Bloomlife, we believe better data leads to better decisions and better outcomes.
We have served thousands of moms throughout the US and the feedback is overwhelming. Moms are desperate for information to make better decisions during this pivotal time of life, Bloomlife is delivering that. We have aggregated the world’s largest physiological dataset on pregnancy and demonstrated the potential this new data can mean for healthcare providers by identifying the first digital biomarker to diagnose (preterm) labor.
At Bloomlife we believe better data leads to better decisions and better outcomes. Going beyond health data of individual users, we are aggregating the largest dataset on maternal and fetal health to identify digital biomarkers predictive, which can help researchers and health care organizations make data-driven decisions about the identification, prediction, and prevention of pregnancy complications, including preterm birth.
Learn more about our mission at Bloomlife and how you can join the maternal health revolution here.
