01
A place to reach out sooner
An invitation to ask for support before a mother decides her situation is severe enough for crisis care.
Partnerships
A supervised postpartum peer-support pilot, free to mothers.
Meleia Maternal is developing Pilot 1: human peer support by secure text for adults from delivery through 12 months postpartum, before, between, and alongside formal care. Mothers would never pay. Guides would be trained, supervised, and paid for their work, with the program funded by hospitals, health systems, insurers, grants, and organizational partners.
Everything on this page is a proposal. The pilot is not yet operational, funding is not yet secured, and no partner has committed. Funding, clinical, legal, privacy, and insurance approvals are not yet complete, and enrollment is not open.
What we're building
A structured peer relationship, not simply access to a queue.
The pilot pairs trained peer connection with proactive check-ins and warm referrals, helping postpartum mothers feel supported before, between, and alongside formal care.
02
Human presence in the moment
A trained peer Guide can listen, validate, offer grounded encouragement, and help identify one manageable next step.
03
A bridge to more support
Warm connection to clinicians, direct professional lactation support, groups, community resources, and urgent pathways.
Pilot 1 is intended to include direct access to a qualified lactation specialist/IBCLC through a separate professional pathway. A Guide may make a warm handoff but does not provide clinical lactation assessment or treatment. The professional may use secure messaging, scheduled telehealth/video, or another approved clinically appropriate format; this is not a promise of 24/7 lactation availability.
Alongside the pilot, Meleia already offers a self-guided Sanctuary: founder-written letters, practical articles, and copyable messages that mothers can use privately today. It is educational and nonclinical, and it is not live support.
Pilot 1 at a glance
A focused pilot with defined access and scope.
Who
50 mothers
A working target of 50 adults, age 18+. Delivery through 12 months postpartum is a Pilot 1 boundary only; future phases may extend beyond the first year based on pilot learning and qualified input.
Timeline
12 + 12 weeks
12 weeks of funded prelaunch preparation, followed by 12 weeks of live pilot service, contingent on securing funding and completing professional and operational prerequisites.
Enrollment
A defined pathway
Participants may be recruited through Meleia’s own community outreach, through an aligned referral partner, or through both. Pilot 1 will use one clearly defined enrollment process, launch population, and local safety and referral structure. Enrollment is not open.
Access
Secure text, posted hours
Daytime, evening, and weekend windows, with a pilot planning assumption of approximately 30 posted service hours per week across different times of day. No voice calls, anonymous access, or unrestricted 24-hour live service.
Connection
Continuity when possible
A primary Guide or small Guide team when operationally possible. Continuity is a goal, not a guarantee that one person will always be available.
Check-ins & cost
Optional and no charge
One optional, opt-in weekly check-in that a mother may decline or stop at any time. The planned funded model is free to mothers; funding is not yet secured.
How a Guide supports the moment
Listen first. Stay grounded. Connect with care when needed.
HEAR
01Understand what a mother is saying and asking for before offering solutions.
HOLD
02Validate the emotional experience without diagnosing or declaring a symptom normal.
CHECK
03Notice safety, medical, feeding, reporting, or professional-support triggers. A safety check can interrupt the sequence at any point.
HOPE
04Offer grounded encouragement and reflect strengths. Hope without guaranteeing an outcome, and never in place of escalation.
HELP
05Ask what would be most useful now and identify one manageable next step, without taking over decisions.
CONNECT
06Offer approved resources, warm referrals, professional support, or urgent pathways as appropriate.
Clear boundaries
Peer support with a clearly defined role.
What it can be
Listening, validation, Grounded Hope, one manageable next step, and a warm connection to the right clinician, lactation professional, group, community resource, or urgent pathway.
What it is not
Peer Guide support is not therapy, psychiatric assessment, diagnosis, treatment, crisis counseling, maternal medical or obstetric care, pediatric or infant care, medication advice, or clinical lactation treatment. It does not replace 911, 988, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline, an emergency department, or a licensed provider.
Infant health and feeding
Guides do not assess an infant's health, symptoms, development, medication, feeding status, or physical health. Infant medical or feeding-status questions go to the child's pediatric provider or an appropriate medical service, without Guide assessment.
A Guide's feeding-related support stays with the mother's emotional experience of breastfeeding, pumping, formula, weaning, guilt, frustration, exhaustion, or feeding decisions. Clinical lactation support is provided only by a qualified lactation professional within that professional's scope, through a separate professional pathway.
Pilot 1 does not promise 24-hour live availability, immediate response at all times, unlimited continuous conversation, a broad educational library, a social network, a Guide marketplace, AI routing, or a professional-consult marketplace.
Safety, training & supervision
Built around defined pathways and accountable human oversight.
Defined safety pathways
Green, Yellow, and Red operating pathways will guide escalation. Guides do not diagnose risk or independently determine that a mother is medically or psychiatrically safe.
Clinical oversight
A named, licensed perinatal mental-health clinical lead must approve the safety model before enrollment. Qualified on-call clinical or supervisory backup must be reachable during every posted service hour.
Coverage planning
Before enrollment, the safety plan will address backup coverage during urgent situations, simultaneous urgent needs, loss of contact, platform outages, location-dependent emergency routing, and review after urgent events.
Guide preparation and quality
The plan budgets approximately 30 to 40 paid pre-service training hours, with final hours and curriculum approved by the clinical lead. Preparation includes scored simulations, timed escalation drills, documentation and boundary exercises, supervised early conversations, weekly group supervision, on-call backup, review after Red events, ongoing transcript-quality review, and attention to Guide wellbeing.
Secure, program-managed technology
Conversations will use secure, program-managed messaging, not personal texting, social media, or personal phone numbers. Identifiable participant information will not be placed in consumer AI tools, and AI will not make safety, mental-health, medical, or escalation decisions.
Meleia's long-term 24/7 vision is a staffed system, not 24/7 availability from any individual Guide.
Future 24/7 coverage would require rotating paid shifts, protected off-duty time, structured handoffs, queue backup, workload limits, supervision, and burnout/vicarious-trauma monitoring. This staffing structure is not yet operational.
Funding the pilot
Planning values for a funded, free-to-mothers model.
These figures are planning values for conversation with funders and partners. Funding is not secured, and no commitment is implied by sharing them.
$52,000
Initial phase request
Funds the 12-week prelaunch preparation: clinical protocol development and approval, legal and privacy review, insurance, secure platform setup, Guide recruitment and training, lactation integration, and implementation planning.
$125,000
Full program planning value
The planning value for the complete program: the funded preparation phase plus the 12-week live pilot, including compensated Guide staffing, supervision, and evaluation.
$15,000
Optional in-kind clinical contribution
An optional in-kind contribution from a clinical partner, such as oversight time from a qualified perinatal mental-health professional, would offset part of the funded amount.
Mothers would never be charged. Guide compensation, supervision, technology, and clinical oversight are budgeted within the funded model, not passed to participants.
Partners & advisors
Exploring a supervised postpartum peer-support pilot.
We welcome conversations with hospitals, maternal-health partners, clinicians, advisers, and funders who are considering what support can exist before, between, and alongside formal care.
This remains a working pilot model. Early conversations with maternal-health professionals and organizations are underway to understand what is required to build the model responsibly. These conversations are not endorsements, confirmed adviserships, or partner commitments. Before enrollment, the model requires clinician-approved protocols, New Jersey legal guidance, insurance, a secure platform, consent, a verified referral network, trained and tested Guides, on-call and queue backup, an outage plan, and clear stop rules.
Meleia is currently seeking support for a paid prelaunch development phase to complete the clinical, legal/privacy, insurance, technology, training, lactation-integration, and implementation work required before enrollment.
Clinical, legal, privacy, insurance, and emergency-response elements are not yet being presented as approved.