There is a particular kind of question that a doctor learns to listen for over years of practice. Not the medical questions — those are expected, and there is a framework for answering them. The other kind. The ones asked quietly, sometimes almost apologetically, at the end of a consultation. The ones where a patient shows you something personal, looks at you carefully, and asks: ‘Is there anything I can do about this?’
For thirty years, those questions arrived in my consulting room wearing different clothes. About the stretching belly skin that itched unbearably in the second trimester. About stretch marks appearing faster than expected, despite consistent moisturising. About the hair that began falling out six weeks after birth — in quantities that shocked even the most composed new mothers. About the hormonal changes to the face that no one had warned them about. And, again and again, about the scar.
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“After thirty years of caring for pregnant women, I knew exactly what they needed. What I couldn’t find was a product range worthy of that knowledge.” — A/Prof. Indika Alahakoon, Co-Founder, Pregnancy and Baby Co. |
Thirty Years. The Same Questions.
I am a specialist obstetrician and maternal fetal medicine expert. I have spent my career at Westmead Hospital and in private practice at Bella Vista and Westmead, caring for pregnancies that range from the straightforward to the extremely complex. I have been Head of the Maternal Fetal Medicine Unit at Westmead Hospital, where the most complicated and high-risk pregnancies in western Sydney are managed. I hold a PhD from the University of Sydney and the CMFM subspecialty qualification — the highest level of specialist training available in maternal fetal medicine.
I say this not to recite credentials, but to provide context: I have spent thirty years at the very centre of pregnancy care. And in those thirty years, the questions my patients asked me about their skin, their hair, and their bodies were never adequately answered by the products the market offered them.
This is not a small observation. These are not trivial concerns. Stretch marks affect up to 90 per cent of pregnant women. Postpartum hair loss — telogen effluvium — affects approximately 92 per cent of new mothers. Pregnancy melasma affects between 32 and 75 per cent of pregnant women. These are near-universal experiences. And yet the quality of clinical evidence behind the products sold to address them was, in most cases, far below the standard I would apply to any other clinical recommendation.
The C-Section Scar Problem
The most urgent and persistent gap was in caesarean scar management.
I have performed thousands of caesarean sections across my career. It is a procedure I know intimately — the layers of tissue, the healing timeline, the complications that can arise, and the outcomes that matter most to patients. And I know that one of those outcomes — the appearance and behaviour of the scar — is consistently underaddressed in postpartum care.
C-section scars sit in one of the most mechanically challenging locations on the body: the lower abdomen, at the waistband line, subject to constant pressure from sitting, standing, lifting, and the physical demands of caring for a newborn. They heal from the inside out. They can become hypersensitive — painful to the touch, to clothing contact, to the gentlest pressure. They can develop tethering, where the healed scar adheres to the underlying fascia, creating the pulling sensation that many C-section mothers describe for months or years after their birth. And in some patients — particularly those with Fitzpatrick III–VI skin tones, which are well-represented in Australia’s multicultural population — they can develop keloid scarring, where the scar tissue grows beyond the original wound boundary.
At their six-week and three-month check-ups, my patients would show me their scars and ask what they could use. What they could do. How they could minimise the keloid formation that was beginning to appear, or soften the raised tissue, or reduce the redness that had not faded as they had hoped.
When I looked at what was available, I was consistently disappointed. There was no well-defined approach. No product range that had been designed specifically for the C-section wound and its particular challenges. I researched, improvised, and recommended the best of what existed — but I knew it was not good enough. My patients deserved better.
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“My patients would come in and show me their caesarean scar and ask what they could do. Some were worried about keloid formation. Some were just uncomfortable. I would look at what was available and think — none of this is what I would recommend. None of this is good enough.” — A/Prof. Indika Alahakoon |
The Decision to Build Something Better
The conversations continued for years. And then, at some point — the kind of point that arrives not as a single moment of clarity but as the accumulated weight of many moments — I decided that if the right products did not exist, I would develop them myself.
This decision was made easier by the involvement of my close friend and colleague, Katie Midson. Katie has worked alongside me as my practice development manager, and she has observed these patient conversations from the inside — understanding not just what patients need clinically, but how they experience their care, what questions they carry home with them, and what the market consistently fails to provide. Where my expertise is clinical, Katie’s is relational. Together, that combination shaped everything about how Pregnancy and Baby Co. was built.
We did not approach the development of our products as marketers asking what would sell. We approached it as a clinician and a patient advocate asking what was genuinely needed. What did the evidence support? What did thirty years of patient conversations point to? What would I be confident recommending to my own patients — and confident putting my name on?
The First Products: Clinical Need, Australian Ingredient
The C-Section Silicone Scar Strips were the first product to be formalised. Medical-grade silicone sheeting is the gold standard in surgical scar management — supported by systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and clinical guidelines from plastic and reconstructive surgery. The Pregnancy and Baby Co. strips are now registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration as a Medical Device Class 1, ARTG 519747 — a government verification of their therapeutic function that no consumer scar product can match without the same regulatory rigour.
The Kakadu Plum Belly Oil emerged from a different but equally urgent need: the stretching, itching, drying belly skin of pregnancy that deserved an active ingredient rather than a passive moisturiser. Kakadu Plum — the small green fruit native to northern Australia, treasured by Indigenous communities for thousands of years — contains the highest natural concentration of Vitamin C of any known source: up to 5,300mg per 100g, up to 100 times more than an orange. Vitamin C stimulates collagen synthesis at the dermal level — the same biological mechanism that supports the elasticity of stretching skin. Combined with Lemon Myrtle for its aromatherapeutic benefit for nausea, and Rosehip for its clinical evidence in scar and skin repair, the Belly Oil became the first product in what is now the Kakadu Plum Collection.
These were not products built on trend research or focus groups. They were built on thirty years of listening.
What Comes Next
Pregnancy and Baby Co. is still growing. The Kakadu Plum Collection is expanding — with products addressing postpartum hair recovery, pregnancy facial skincare, breastfeeding-specific concerns, and more. Each new product answers a question that has been raised in my consulting room. Each one is developed with the same standard I apply to everything in my clinical practice: what does the evidence say, and is this truly the best we can do for the women we care about?
My patients trusted me with the most significant health journey of their lives. Pregnancy and Baby Co. is my way of continuing to show up for them — beyond the consulting room, beyond the birth, and into every stage of the journey that follows.
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“We built this brand because the women in our care deserved better. Thirty years of clinical practice was not the starting point for Pregnancy and Baby Co. It was the foundation.” — A/Prof. Indika Alahakoon & Ms. Katie Midson, Co-Founders, Pregnancy and Baby Co. |
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A/Prof. Indika Alahakoon is a Specialist Obstetrician and Maternal Fetal Medicine Expert with 30+ years of experience. She holds MBBS(Hons I), FRANZCOG, DDU, CMFM, and a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, Director of the Centre for Women’s Ultrasound, and former Head of the Maternal Fetal Medicine Unit at Westmead Hospital. She is the Co-Founder of Pregnancy and Baby Co. alongside her friend and practice development manager, Ms. Katie Midson.
Clinical profile: indika-alahakoon.com.au | Brand: pregnancyandbabyco.com.au
