The Mama Years · Maternal health community

A platform that cost a fortune, rebuilt as one she owns.

The Mama Years is Nurse Courtney's maternal health community. It rented an expensive off-the-shelf platform that fought her on the features mums needed most. We built her a custom app she owns, more than three times cheaper to run.

The brief

The audience was never the problem.

Courtney had done the hard part: a loved community of thousands of mums, built on her clinical expertise in NICU nursing, lactation and infant sleep, and a calm, no-judgement voice.

The platform underneath was the problem. It auto-renewed for more than three times what her own app now costs to run, and still could not do what members needed. Clunky navigation, no real tools, and too much delivered by hand in twice-weekly lives that did not scale.

Renew the rent, or build something she owns that does exactly what her mums need, for a fraction of the cost. She chose to build.

What we did

The work

Strategy

Owned and lean

Own the platform. No annual ransom on software she cannot change. One codebase, hers.
Cut the running cost. A lean, modern stack in place of the recurring platform fee.

Foundations

Actually useful

Trackers mums open daily: pregnancy, cycle and TTC, kicks, contractions, feeds, sleep, nappies.
InstantConsult, an AI consult trained on her actual methodology. Her answer at 2am.
Safety-critical guidance renders word for word, works offline and is never paraphrased.
One app for the whole journey: trying to conceive, pregnancy, newborn, baby. No re-onboarding.

Foundations

Never marking its own homework

A structured, multi-model build: research, planning, spec, code, and a human click-through at the end.
Every phase has its own folder and artefact, so every decision is traceable.
Clinical content is specified, locked and reviewed apart from the code that displays it. The words a worried parent reads are the words that were signed off.

What happened

Cheaper to run. Worth more to belong to.

For the business, the platform fee is gone, replaced by a lean stack she owns. For members, the app replaces a small fortune in separate specialists.

3x+cheaper to run than the old platform
1 appthe whole journey, TTC to baby
2amInstantConsult, trained on her methodology

Replacing A$1,430 to 5,700 a year of separate specialists for the price of a single consult — Replacing A$1,430 to 5,700 a year of specialists for the price of one consult.

The work, up close

A trusted friend who happens to be a nurse.

Warmth with authority. Led by Courtney, speaking to the moments mums are actually in, and earning trust before it asks for a subscription.

Founder-led design, the expert you wished was your best friend

InstantConsult, Courtney's clinical knowledge on tap at 2am

Content that meets real moments, the door shuts at 7pm

Everything in one place: consult, video library, protocols, live, community

Where it is now

Built, live and in testing.

The app is live. The iOS app is on TestFlight with its App Store listing finished, built from the same backend, one source of truth across web and mobile. Public launch comes next.