How The First Parents, a technology platform, provides support during pregnancy and parenthood

By Ambika Shaligram

Experiencing motherhood made Honey Bajaj realise major gaps in the support system, especially in India. Bajaj, who heads special projects at the Managing Trustee’s Office at Tata Trusts, realised that there is an urgent need for a verified evidence based platform to empower the pregnancy to parenthood journey.

Hence, she started The First Parents, a unique technology platform for parents and parents to be. Here’s more from Bajaj…

Can you tell us how your personal experiences of being a mother and an innovator helped in shaping The First Parents?

I have been an innovator for over a decade and I have had the opportunity to work and invent baby incubators for pre-term and low birth weight babies, rotatable forceps for helping in operative vaginal delivery or more commonly known as forceps delivery at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston and data driven platforms for improving maternal and infant mortality for the Public Health Department of Maharashtra.  

But being a first time mom I realised that there was so much more to the journey of pregnancy and motherhood than I had anticipated. As a designer and innovator I empathised with mothers while inventing platforms and products but experiencing motherhood made me realise major gaps in the support system, especially in India. 

The hypothesis became crystal clear when I visited my native town Siliguri during my postpartum months. To my surprise over 60 per cent of mothers were denied access to basic and pressing information because of lack of healthcare experts in their vicinity, which was quite easily accessible for me in Mumbai. 

There was almost no awareness of the importance of experts like Lactation consultant, Nutritionist, Urogynecologist, Sleep therapist, etc. Moreover there was negligible counselling by OBYGN’s over pros and cons of natural birth vs cesarean for expecting mothers.

The Lockdown and the COVID-19 Pandemic increased further anxiety and stress on expecting mothers and first time parents. I started receiving frequent calls and messages on social media platforms to help them with their issues and concerns. After my research through community platforms etc., I noticed a pattern of mothers looking for answers to their problems by asking another mother rather than reaching out to an expert and not realising that each pregnancy and parenthood journey is different. An expert can give a more evidence based solution to the problem being faced.

The Lockdown and the inability to access experts in tier 2, tier 3 cities helped me shape The First Parents. I realised that there is an urgent need for a verified evidence based platform to empower the pregnancy to parenthood journey. Hence, I started The First Parents with the intent that babies do n

Honey Bajaj

ot come with a manual but we do.

Can you tell us about the sessions planned for mothers? The health and reproductive system of Indian women has been affected by years of malnourishment and unhygienic conditions in which we live and work in. Do these sessions address concerns that are unique to Indian women?

Yes, The First Parents is focused on sessions for Indian women or women of Indian origin.  We have tried to take a holistic approach to the Wellness Sessions for Moms and Moms to be by covering as many topics possible. In each session we demystify traditional and cultural myths and validate them with scientific evidence.

Here is the list of completed session and upcoming sessions:

COMPLETED SESSIONS

• How to take care of your baby during COVID for mother's about to deliver or have infants under 6 months

• Postpartum Body & Wellness

• Hospital Bag & Essentials

• Prenatal diet and fitness

• Prenatal Yoga for a Healthy Pregnancy

• Lactation Basics

• Nutrition requirements during lactation

• Postnatal depression

• Skin & hair care

• Speech and Language Development

• Nutrition for 6 months to 5years

• Baby Sleep Therapy and Management

• Dental Health for Pregnant Women

• Importance of both Natural birth and C-section or Natural birth vs Operative vaginal delivery using Forceps.

• Importance of play. How families can cope with COVID-19 through Play?

• Importance of Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Women especially during after Delivery suffering from urinary incontinence.  

UPCOMING SESSIONS

• Breastfeeding in the First Hour, its Importance and how it is in the mother's hands.

• Male Infertility in India

• Nutrition for PCOD/PCOS and pregnant women.

• Importance of primary vaccinations for newborn during COVID-19 pandemic and precautions for Neonates during COVID-19

• Sleep Disorders in Children and importance of sleep therapy for improvements.

• Addressing issues of managing growth and development of toddlers age 1- 4years

How often will you plan the sessions on Zoom and Instagram? Will it continue beyond the lockdown and COVID-19, because access to medical healthcare is a big issue in India?

The lockdown and COVID-19 put severe restrictions on families and their ability to access high quality prenatal care, postpartum care and paediatric support.

 India is projected to record the highest number of births in the nine months since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March, with more than 20 million babies expected to be born in the country between March and December, according to a top UN body.

The First Parents is a platform to provide step by step support during pregnancy and parenthood and to give all mothers an equal opportunity and access to the best healthcare experts. The lockdown became a catalyst for us as it enabled digital visibility. Till date we keep saying the internet has connected the world but the lockdown and constraints of COVID-19 truly connected the users and solution providers. 

Yes, we plan to continue beyond the lockdown and COVID-19 as a lot of 101 programmes and expert assistance is required from pregnancy to parenthood in cities and towns lacking specialist and super specialist for gynaecology and paediatric issues.

We plan the Zoom and Instagram sessions every week. Moreover the sessions are available on our Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/thefirstparents/), YouTube and our website (http://thefirstparents.com/) for watching them in case the participants could not attend the live session.

What sort of feedback have you received so far? Does it vary depending on the people living in a particular city/state and the medical facilities available there?

We started in the second week of May with a ‘Wellness Event for Moms’ across India and in just two weeks we received great feedback and validation and over 1900 moms following us on Instagram till date. Thereafter, we launched our second event the International Month and we have moms of Indian origin following us from across the globe.

Yes, the feedback varies depending on the people living in particular city/state, the medical facilities and access to experts available. It also depends a lot on whether it’s a first time pregnancy or the second.

I am sharing some of the feedback we received on our website from mothers and parents across India.

Arty libang, Itanagar: The topics on CS and normal delivery was very enlightening especially for new to-be-mom like me. Also I cannot specify on just one topic that I would like to attend. Almost all the upcoming sessions on before and after delivery, parenting etc. would definitely prove beneficial. Therefore gladly looking forward to it. Thank you

Sveta Chakrabarti, Bangalore: This is a much needed forum for us new mums to get informed. How to take care of our LOs in today's generation. Where old advice can sometimes be detrimental to the development of the baby… it's important for new mums to have the power of information to do best for their babies.

Makara Jyothi, Coimbatore: Amazing @thefirstparents doing a beautiful session with many experts... it's a eye opener for all the mommies during this covid time... excellent topics and the event was going so nice.

Would you also be looking at non-technology ways of creating the awareness amongst new mothers -- by holding physical workshops, sessions in Tier-II, Tier-III cities?

Hopefully in the future. But at the moment given the new normal we do not want to plan anything which can increase exposure for expecting and new mothers.

You have previously come up with Embrace Nest, an incubator, and also helped ASHA workers. What other health issues can be solved through technology and design interventions? Are you toying with some ideas?

Thank you. I personally feel the biggest challenge we are facing is COVID-19. There are a lot of technology and design interventions which can be made to enable and map vulnerable populations to COVID-19 like better contact tracing apps, data driven health reports via individual health profiles, etc.

Unfortunately, in India, the support system for pulmonary diseases and its awareness is extremely low. The population suffering with comorbidities is extremely high e.g. COPD, Asthma, Allergic Rhinitis, etc. and they are likely to be more vulnerable to COVID-19.

I have been working with my professor at MIT, Boston to develop a platform to detect pulmonary diseases just using a simple smartphone via cough recordings. The work is still under research and we hope we can release it soon.