National Maternal Health Awareness Day offers us an opportunity to reflect back on past wins and measure how far we've come in delivering better maternal healthcare to women. It also provides a moment to look ahead, to confront the challenges that have yet to be overcome and consider of all the women in the U.S. who, despite our nation's wealth and advancements, still struggle to access quality maternal health care.
For this maternal health day, we have a patient story that highlights both the success and the challenges in maternal healthcare -- two stories, in fact, with radically different trajectories. These stories emphasize the need to listen to women, and drive home the importance of a standard approach to care that empowers mothers with objective, data-driven tools.
Thirty-eight years old and considered high-risk, Molly was diagnosed with gestational hypertension during her pregnancy, leading to an induced delivery for safety. After the delivery of her healthy baby girl, Molly was enrolled in Babyscripts to monitor her blood pressure levels for postpartum hypertension.
Despite Molly's eagerness to be discharged and get home, her nurse took the time to walk her through the process of self-monitoring her blood pressure with Babyscripts and recording her symptoms, explaining the risks of preeclampsia and eclampsia and what to be on guard for. Molly took the responsibility seriously, diligently recording her blood pressure levels at least twice a day.
Four days after being discharged, Molly noticed an elevated blood pressure reading paired with a persistent headache. Within moments of logging her symptoms in Babyscripts, an on-call nurse reached out. This prompt response set off a series of actions: a consultation with her care team, an in-clinic blood pressure check the next day, and ultimately an overnight hospital stay to regulate her condition. By the time she left the hospital, Molly had a tailored treatment plan, including medication to manage her blood pressure, and a renewed sense of safety in the postpartum period.
Around the same time, Molly's sister-in-law also went through childbirth, and had an almost identical experience in postpartum, experiencing persistent migraines in the days following discharge. Without access to digital tools or education about the risks of postpartum hypertension, her sister-in-law did not know to monitor for blood pressure, and she struggled to get her symptoms taken seriously by care providers.
She ended up experiencing a seizure during the postpartum period and had to check herself into a clinic without prior intervention, fortunately recovering to return to her newborn twins after a traumatic hospital stay.
For Molly, her sister-in-law's experience brought home how lucky she had been to be educated about her risks and provided with a way to monitor her symptoms.
"I was frustrated at the time, even when I got that call from the on-call nurse," Molly told us, explaining the annoyance of recording a high BP reading during a family holiday with a newborn to take care of. "Like, all right, you need to go to your provider tomorrow. Just because I had a headache and my blood pressure was high.
But I was very trusting and I believed everybody that this could be very serious. [They told me] 'You could have a seizure, you could have a stroke. We just want to -- we're looking out for you.' So I was absolutely co-operative. But it was hard too because [my daughter] was six days old.
I took her with me to the hospital, she stayed with me overnight. We were just in this tiny room and I had all these, like, inconveniences in my head.
But now with my sister in law's experience, it hit me because I care deeply for her but I also just immediately was thinking of everything that I was going through and -- oh my gosh, what if I didn't have this tool and there weren't other people looking out for me throughout my postpartum experience. I immediately had a way to see how some really negative things could have happened."
For Molly, Babyscripts wasn’t just a tool—it was a lifeline. The real-time monitoring allowed her care team to catch her symptoms early, preventing an emergency and empowering her to advocate for herself with objective data when needed. She had something she could point to -- a reading on a monitor that was not affected by her particular threshold of pain or emotional response to postpartum.
As a mother of three who has carried seven pregnancies, including the devastating loss of a stillborn child, Molly knows the stakes of maternal health all too well. With her age and medical history weighing heavily, she was deeply grateful for Babyscripts' support during such a vulnerable time. In her words, the platform didn’t just provide peace of mind—it quite possibly saved her life, sparing her the trauma her sister-in-law endured or something far worse.
"Thankfully, my sister in law is recovering really well, but that it didn't have to be her story," Molly told us, and we agree.
Molly’s story, and that of her sister-in-law, illuminates the stark contrasts that exist in maternal healthcare today—a landscape where access to innovative tools can mean the difference between life-saving interventions and preventable emergencies. As we mark National Maternal Health Day, we must commit to addressing these disparities, ensuring that every woman, regardless of her circumstances, has access to the education, tools, and care she needs to thrive during and after pregnancy.
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