Pumbit

The need

After birth, the attention turns to the baby — and the mother is left to recover surrounded by people who love her but don’t know how to show up. For second-generation Asian American mothers especially, the cultural traditions of postpartum care often don’t survive the distance, and asking for help can feel like a burden. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders affect roughly 1 in 5 new mothers in the U.S., frequently in silence.

The approach

Diane worked with new mothers and a postpartum doula to design for the gap between wanting to help and knowing how. Pumbit is built on considerate design and culturally resonant gestures — small, tender acts of care a mother’s village can send, so support arrives without her having to ask for it.

• Needfinding with mothers and a postpartum doula
• Culturally grounded “gestures of care,” many of them food-based
• An AI layer that keeps care going when human attention fades

The artifact

The working prototype gives a mother’s people six ways to show up — a rice-ball letter, a tea ceremony, a shared photo — and adds Careling, an AI companion that holds continuity and attunement between human moments. It’s being tested with mothers now.

Why it matters

Pumbit reframes postpartum support from a request the mother has to make into a system that moves toward her — turning scattered good intentions into care that actually lands.