Across thirty years in obstetric practice, A/Prof. Alahakoon observed the same pattern: women who were well-supported medically through their pregnancies were left largely unsupported when it came to the physical changes their skin, hair, and body underwent. Stretch marks developing faster than expected. Intense itchiness on the belly as it grew. Hormonal acne and melasma appearing on the face. And postpartum — hair falling out in alarming quantities, skin becoming dry and dull, and the caesarean scar raising questions that no product on the market was truly designed to answer.

These were not minor concerns. For many women, they were among the most emotionally and physically significant aspects of pregnancy. And they were being met with generic advice and inadequate products

The clearest and most urgent gap was in C-section scar management. A/Prof. Alahakoon has performed thousands of caesarean sections across her career. She has sat with women at their six-week and three-month postpartum check-ups and listened to their concerns about their scars — redness that lingered, raised tissue that felt foreign to the touch, the fear of keloid formation that runs higher in women with certain skin tones.

Keloid scarring — where scar tissue grows beyond the original wound boundary — is a genuine medical concern for some C-section patients, particularly those with Fitzpatrick III–VI skin tones, which are well-represented in Australia's multicultural population. A/Prof. Alahakoon was asked, again and again, what to use. What to do. How to minimise it.

When she looked at what was available, the answer was inadequate. There was no well-defined approach. No product range specifically designed for the C-section wound and its particular challenges — its location at the waistband, its constant mechanical challenge from sitting, lifting, and carrying, its vulnerability to keloid formation in genetically predisposed patients.

After years of encountering the same unmet needs and fielding the same requests from her patients, A/Prof. Alahakoon made a decision: she would develop the products herself.

This was not a casual commercial idea. It was a clinical response to a clinical gap — the same rigour she applied to her research into preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction, now applied to the question of what the women she cared for actually needed to support their skin through pregnancy and recovery.

Together with her close friend and practice development manager Katie Midson — who had watched these conversations unfold across years of working alongside Indika in clinical practice — Pregnancy and Baby Co. was formed. Katie brought the operational and business perspective. Indika brought the clinical knowledge, the research background, and the weight of thirty years of patient trust.

The first products to emerge were the most urgent: a silicone-based C-section scar management system, anchored by medical-grade silicone strips now registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration as a Medical Device Class 1 (ARTG 528546) — and a Kakadu Plum Belly Oil formulated to address the stretch mark, elasticity, and hydration concerns that had been raised in A/Prof. Alahakoon's consulting room for three decades.

The Kakadu Plum — the world's richest natural source of Vitamin C, sourced from the Northern Territory and treasured by Indigenous communities for thousands of years — was chosen not for its marketing appeal but for its clinical mechanism: Vitamin C stimulates collagen synthesis at the dermal level, supporting the elasticity of stretching pregnancy skin in a way that is safe, natural, and evidence-informed.

These products were not developed by marketers. They were developed by a specialist obstetrician who had been wanting to develop them for years.

Pregnancy and Baby Co. now offers a growing collection of products — from the hero Kakadu Plum Belly Oil to the TGA-registered C-Section Healing Kit — with a full range in development addressing every stage of the pregnancy and postpartum journey. Every product carries A/Prof. Alahakoon's clinical rationale and her name, because she designed them and believes in them enough to put both on the label.

The mission has not changed since the first conversation in the consulting room. Women deserve skincare that is as clinically rigorous as every other aspect of their pregnancy care. Pregnancy and Baby Co. exists to close the gap between what the medical evidence supports and what the consumer market has historically provided.