Being empowered to make choices about your health is the ultimate glow-up for 2018. The latest way to stay up to date (and keep yourself in optimal health) involves a whole lot of data—from when to expect your next period to how sleep and exercise are affecting your mood.
Enter femtech apps.
Search the App Store for any number of women’s health needs like period tracking, pregnancy, sexual health, or birth control, and you’re likely to be scrolling for a while. These apps are a huge part of women’s healthcare in 2018. Danish entrepreneur Ida Tin calls this niche technology femtech, and it generates billions of investment dollars a year.
Tin is the co-founder and CEO of period-tracking app Clue and claims femtech’s popularity is due to the number of women who want more personalized choices. Femtech allows technology—which we’re already using in daily life—to address the complexities of women’s bodies and shed light on topics once considered taboo, like menstruation and sexual health.
“Reproductive health is an incredibly foundational and central part of our lives, but there’s a real lack of clarity for women,” Tin told Code Red Co. last year. “These misconceptions and stigmas exist because of a lack of research into, and understanding of, menstruation.”
With everything from weekly updates during pregnancy to trusted sexual health info at your fingertips, femtech apps have a lot to offer. Here are six apps that will give you a better understanding of your health, help you connect with other women, and keep you safe along the way.
[sol title=”Clue” subheader=”Period Tracking”]
Clue is one of many apps helping users track their menstrual cycles. However, it is set apart by being the highest ranking free period-tracking app according to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a publication of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). The study scored more than 1,000 apps based on accuracy, features, and functionality and Clue earned the highest score of those evaluated.
With Clue you can track your period and fertile windows and document moods, pain symptoms, exercise, medication, and sexual activity to gain a better understanding of your own personal patterns.
Available for iOS and Android.
[sol title=”Maven” subheader=”Making Healthcare More Accessible”]
Lack of access to healthcare services is one of the biggest women’s issues we face. From the inability to attend regular medical appointments to financial barriers to affording standard care, women are struggling to keep themselves healthy. Enter Maven, an app that connects users with medical and mental health professionals via video call or private message.
You can book an appointment with a doctor, nurse practitioner, midwife, nutritionist, lactation consultant, or licensed counselor directly through the app. The appointment costs vary, from $18 for a 10-minute appointment with a nurse practitioner or midwife to $70 for a 40-minute appointment with a mental health professional. They’ll also write you prescriptions, so you’ll never have to go without birth control, no matter your state legislature’s feelings on it. Unfortunately, most insurance companies won’t accept claims from Maven, so you’ll likely have to pay out of pocket. Still, increasing the potential for access is something we’re definitely happy to get behind.
Currently only available for iOS, but appointments can also be booked online for those without an Apple device.
[sol title=”Eve by Glow” subheader=”Pregnancy Prevention”]
Glow, an enterprise that creates “personal health tracking products [to] illuminate health through data,” offers several femtech apps including Glow, an ovulation and fertility tracker focused on supporting women who are trying to conceive. Glow also offers Nurture for pregnancy tracking and Glow Baby for baby’s first year.
Eve by Glow offers similar features as other period trackers but is geared more toward women trying to avoid pregnancy. Eve allows you to track your cycle and sexual activity while also connecting you with trusted information on health and sex brought to you by Bedsider, a birth control support network operated by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Available for iOS and Android.
[sol title=”The Bump Pregnancy Countdown” subheader=”Planner, Prenatal Health Tips, and Product Reviews”]
From the people who brought you the wedding planning website The Knot comes a one-stop-shop for expectant moms.
The Bump Pregnancy Countdown app features a planner with information and even suggested questions for prenatal doctor’s visits, a catalog of baby products and reviews, and a question tool that allows users to get quick answers from other moms as well as medical experts. HealthyWay’s audience development strategist and resident momma-to-be, Ashley, says she likes that “it tells you both what is going on with your baby and also what you can expect week-by-week to happen to your body during pregnancy.”
Available for iOS and Android.
[sol title=”Hey! Vina” subheader=”Community Building”]
Hey! Vina is like Tinder, but for female companionship. It uses the same “swipe right” idea to help you find new friends and join communities of like-minded women. The app, which is available only to self-identified women, suggests friendship matches based on mutual Facebook acquaintances, proximity, and results from various personality quizzes.
We all know how difficult it can be to find and maintain adult friendships, and Hey! Vina makes that process a little easier.
Available for iOS and Android.
[sol title=”SafeTrek” subheader=”That Secure Feeling, Just a Button Away”]
SafeTrek was founded in HealthyWay’s hometown: St. Louis, Missouri, and while we love giving a shoutout to local businesses, that’s not the only reason we’re recommending this personal safety app.
Though it wasn’t necessarily designed specifically for women, nearly all of this app’s 250,000 users are women. What sets SafeTrek apart from other safety apps is that you don’t have to bring the phone to your ear or even remove it from your purse or pocket to operate it. When you’re in a situation where you could feel vulnerable—walking alone to your car at night, for instance—this app may offer you some peace of mind. All you have to do is press the app’s center button while en route. Once you reach a safe place, release the button and enter a PIN. If the button is released and no PIN is entered, the app will immediately contact police and send them to your location.
Do we love that the burden of women’s safety nearly always falls on women? Nope. But there’s no doubt we feel a little safer knowing this app has our backs.
Available for iOS and Android.
Author: Erin Heger
I’ll never forget the day my husband and I brought our son home from the hospital, feeling overwhelmed and anxious as the nurse showed us how to strap his tiny, six-pound body into his car seat. It seemed so complicated—snap here, pull there, secure tightly and release. “How are we ever going to do this on our own?” I asked my husband sheepishly as we exited the hospital doors into the snowy January afternoon.
Things didn’t get much easier once we were home. My son was a colicky newborn who cried for hours. Within four months I was diagnosed with postpartum depression (PPD) and it became clear to me that I had to start taking better care of myself. Finding my way out of the darkness of PPD became a journey of self-discovery during which I learned these valuable lessons:
1. There’s no one right way to do things.
As an anxious first-time mom, I spent my entire pregnancy trying to teach myself how to be a parent, and in doing so developed parenting plans based on advice from other moms I met online. I had decided—before I even met my baby—exactly how I wanted to do things. I was going to exclusively breastfeed, cloth diaper until potty training, respond to every cry, and wear my baby constantly.
Well, my son challenged every preconceived notion I had about caring for a newborn, and while some of my “rules” stuck, most of them were just not a good fit. Breastfeeding, as veteran moms know, was far more difficult than I ever thought it would be. We managed to keep it going for 13 months, but it wasn’t easy. We cloth diapered for over a year until it became too hard with travel and daycare.
[pullquote align=”center”]I was going to exclusively breastfeed, cloth diaper until potty training, respond to every cry, and wear my baby constantly.[/pullquote]
On the other hand, responding to every cry sent my anxiety through the roof. Babywearing worked sometimes, although it seemed my son really preferred to be put down and, to be honest, I kind of liked it, too.
In his first year, my son showed me that “best” is relative. What works for one family may not work for another, and that is okay.
2. Babies cry.
It’s obvious right? Babies do cry. Some more than others, and I was not at all prepared for my son’s long bouts of crying. What’s worse is that I had developed this idea that as his mom I should be able to soothe him, and if I couldn’t, then I was failing. In reality, babies cry, and even the best baby whisperers among us can’t always make it stop. My son’s crying was a huge trigger for my depression, so to improve my mental health I had to re-evaluate how I handled it.
First, I had to accept that crying is how he communicates. Next, I stopped automatically responding to every sound he made and started truly listening to him. When I did, I found it was much easier to determine when he really needed me and when he might be expressing some other emotion like fatigue or frustration. Most importantly, I learned that crying would not harm him or sever our bond, which was a legitimate worry of mine in the beginning. Fostering his independence and letting him fuss every now and then actually made both of us a lot happier, and I learned he is far more resilient than I gave him credit for.
3. Self-care is not selfish.
My lowest points as a new mom were a direct result of putting myself last—not getting enough sleep, not eating well, and not nurturing my hobbies. It was my son’s pediatrician who insisted I get help after I broke down in tears at her office. She helped me see how my well-being is linked to my son’s, and it was the wake-up call I needed to start taking my health seriously.
[pullquote align=”center”]My son’s crying was a huge trigger for my depression, so to improve my mental health I had to re-evaluate how I handled it.[/pullquote]
I began to lean more on friends and family to help with my baby while I carved out the time to catch up on sleep, eat more nutritiously, and just be alone every now and then. As I slowly got better, I noticed my son seemed happier, too, and I realized that taking care of myself just might be the best thing I can do for him.
4. How to Trust And Love Myself
The biggest lesson my son taught me—and one that he continues to teach me—is that I am a good mom just the way I am and I don’t have to prove that to anyone else. It took time for me to realize there really isn’t a secret parenting manual and that I don’t need outside validation to determine what is best for my child. When I found the courage to tune everyone else’s voices out, I gained confidence in own unique parenting style and both my son and I began to thrive.
These days I’m much better at letting unsolicited advice roll off my shoulders, and while I still stumble sometimes, and I always will, I know the bond I have with my son is strong enough to withstand anything that comes our way.