- Product Design
- AI-Native Mobile
- Built with Claude Code
Held
AI-Native Pregnancy & Postpartum Companion App
View live app →It started at 3am. Not with a design brief. Not with a Figma file.
It started years ago, with a phone call from a new parent who was scared, exhausted, and didn't know if what they were feeling was normal. I was their doula. I picked up the phone.
I spent 8 years as a full-spectrum doula supporting people through fertility, pregnancy, birth, and the weeks after. And one thing became clear to me over and over again: the support doesn't stop at birth. But most products do.
That's the gap Held was built to fill.
The Problem
Most pregnancy apps abandon you the moment the baby arrives.
The fourth trimester — the 12 weeks after delivery — is one of the most physically and emotionally demanding periods of a person's life. People go home from the hospital with a two-week follow-up appointment and a pamphlet.
As a designer with nearly a decade of clinical experience, I couldn't unsee that gap. So I built something to fill it.
The App
Five features. One continuous experience.
Held is a mobile-first AI companion that travels with you from the first trimester all the way through postpartum.
Pregnancy Tracker
Week-by-week guidance from weeks 1–40. Baby development, body changes, what to watch for. Gender-neutral language throughout, because not everyone carrying a pregnancy is a woman.
AI Q&A Companion
A real chat interface powered by Claude AI. Ask anything — symptoms, fears, what's normal. The AI responds like a knowledgeable doula friend: warm, calm, and always clear about when to call your provider.
Journal
A private space to write through the emotional experience of pregnancy and postpartum. Each entry captures your mood, the date, and your current week.
Birth Preferences
A screen most apps don't include. I added it because I've been in delivery rooms where a person's wishes weren't communicated to their care team. This screen exists because of that.
Postpartum Check-in
Daily mood, sleep, energy, and recovery tracking. The AI responds gently, and when someone signals distress, the 988 crisis line is always visible. Designing that boundary was as important as designing the interface.
Three core screens
What I Built It With
I didn't just design Held. I coded it.
Using Claude Code, I built a working, live app with real AI responses. Every screen you see is functional, not a mockup. This was intentional — the future of product design is designers who can build. I wanted to prove I'm one of them.
- Figma
- Claude Code
- Claude API
- ChatGPT
- WCAG 2.1
What It Taught Me
The clinical empathy came first. The code came second.
The most important design decisions in Held happened before I opened any tool. Knowing who I was designing for, and what they needed at 3am, shaped everything.
That's what 8 years as a doula gave me. And it's what I bring to every product I build.
Try Held on your phone
Open Held →