Navigating the healthcare system can feel overwhelming and, at times, defeating. For many women, it means being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told their symptoms are just “part of being a woman.” But what if there was a better way forward?

In this week’s episode of The Science of Motherhood, Dr Renee White speaks with Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks, medical doctor and founder of Ovum. Ariella is on a mission to revolutionise the way women experience healthcare by building an intelligent, integrated platform that helps women track, understand, and advocate for their health across their whole lifespan.

From her time working in hospitals to launching a tech company designed to close the gender health gap, Ariella shares the personal and professional journey that led to Ovum and why this kind of innovation is urgently needed.

You’ll hear about:

• Why Ariella stepped away from clinical practice to build a tool women actually need
• How Ovum is using AI to personalise women’s health data and decision-making
• The invisible bias baked into traditional health systems and how to challenge it
• Why health education and early intervention are game-changers for better outcomes
• What’s next for Ovum and the wider femtech movement in Australia

This episode is a powerful reminder that women’s health deserves more than band-aid solutions. It deserves innovation, evidence, and a whole lot of heart.

Resources and Links:

📲 Want to chat more about this? Connect with Renee on Instagram: @fillyourcup_

🌐 Want to learn more about Dr Renee White and explore Fill Your Cup Doula services

🍪If you want to gobble up our famous Chocolate + Goji lactation cookies, look no further!

🔗 Learn more about Ovum and sign up for early access: askovum.com/

💼 Connect with Ovum on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ovumai

🎧 Loved this episode? Share it with a friend, colleague or fellow mum who’s ready to take charge of her health. And if you haven’t already, hit subscribe and leave a review — your support helps this conversation reach more women who need to hear it.

Because when women are equipped with knowledge, they become unstoppable. 💛

Disclaimer: The information on this podcast presented by the Fill Your Cup is not a substitute for independent professional advice.

Nothing contained in this podcast is intended to be used as medical advice and it is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, nor should it be used for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for your own health professional's advice.

[00:00:31] Dr Renee White: Hello and welcome to episode 178 of The Science of Motherhood. I am your host, Dr. Renee White. This episode is proudly supported by Fill Your Cup, Australia's first doula village, where we provide support, food, and guidance, ensuring every Mother's Cup is full. Fill your cup exists because we believe in the transformative power of support [00:01:00] during one of life's most significant transitions. Welcoming a new child and becoming a mum, with more than 16 years in health and medical education, we truly understand how to replenish, restore, and support you in the thick of motherhood.

[00:01:51] Dr Renee White: If you are having a baby, thinking of having a baby, or you know someone who is pregnant and looking for that extra support [00:02:00] during birth or postpartum, feel free to have a look at our doula offerings on the website. I fill your cup.com or join us over on Instagram at Fill your Cup underscore alright, let's dive into today's episode.

[00:03:17] Dr Renee White: And like all amazing entrepreneurs, something happens in your personal life. I feel like there's always, there's always that pivotal moment where you kind of [00:03:30] go to yourself, hold on a minute. This is not cool. There is a gap, and you know what? I'm gonna fill it and that is exactly what she's creating with Ovum. So Ovum is the first personal health assistant powered by AI to support women, and it's very, very cool. Just launched last month, [00:04:00] it is an online platform where you can chat to Ovum about your history, about what you're feeling, about what's going on with you at the moment. You can input your medical records, you can input, um, all your biometrics through you know, your Fitbit and your Apple iWatch and your Aura rings and things like that. And essentially what it's gonna be is this [00:04:30] amazing user friendly interface. With comprehensive health monitoring, you're gonna be able to have access to professional advice. We talk about, and this is, oh, one of those things where like anyone can make an app, right?

[00:06:13] Dr Renee White: Which is gonna be just amazing. Alright, cannot wait for you to listen to this episode. It is going to absolutely shake up. The industry here is Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks. [00:06:30] Hello and welcome to the podcast, Ariella from Ovum. How are you?

[00:06:37] Dr Renee White: I am very good. The sun is shining here in Hobart, which is fantastic. I feel like we are kind of getting our second wind of summer, which is always good. Uh, 'cause it's notoriously freezing here.

[00:06:54] Dr Renee White: You must you must get on the plane. It's not that far. I, I'm a Melbourne girl [00:07:00] you know through and through.

[00:07:01] Dr Renee White: But, um, yeah, making the, uh, jump over the ditch was a very good call for us. But, um, yes, we have got you on the podcast today to talk about your amazing technology Ovum.

[00:07:16] Dr Renee White: Uh, which I have kind of been following in the media. I feel like every time, like you cannot swing a cat Ariella and not hit you or Ovum square in the face. I'm just like this woman is everywhere [00:07:30] because you have generated, I think, a lot of interest, you know, within the tech field, within VC field, within, you know, women's health field coming at it from all angles. I always like to start these chats because your career has kind of evolved a little bit. Can you please let the listeners know how this all started. What was your background, uh, and how did you get to where you are [00:08:00] today?

[00:08:33] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: And that's what allowed me to really fall in love with women, women's health and just like what women were able to do. I mean, you study embryology and you learn every cellular bit of formation of a human. And it's just incredible and so I was like, Hey, I wanna do medicine. I wanna do women's health. I want to do obstetrics and gynecology. So I sat down that few times, eventually got in and then I did post-grad, uh, medicine at Macquarie University in Sydney. So I made the move over [00:09:00] there and it was during my third year of medical school. So it was during COVID at this time. Mm-hmm. So we were meant to go overseas, but we actually stayed in Australia and instead went to all different states.

[00:09:58] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:10:37] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: So anyway, saw all these issues, really saw firsthand, numerous case examples and I thought, why do we have this blue book in New South Wales? It's a blue book, I think it's a different color in Victoria or Tasmania that tracks children's health.

[00:10:51] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: In this book. Why? Why women are so complex and so like we need to have a longitudinal understanding of our health, so why don't we do this for women? And it was literally, [00:11:00] I remember driving and this like light bulb moment.

[00:11:03] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: And then it was fundamentally from there that I thought, I wanna create something this before ai. Okay. Something that integrates women's health data longitudinally, empowers them through health literacy and then feeds that back into research and that hasn't changed. AI's come into it because tech helps. It hasn't changed, and then it was a course of finishing medical school. I did internship at Prince of Wales and at the same time built the company, did a lot of, um, accelerators, did a commercialisation program through the New South [00:11:30] Wales government, got some initial investment, prototype MVP tested, spoke to 350 women, tested the product.

[00:11:59] Dr Renee White: I think, you [00:12:00] know, you've, you've hit the nail on the head. Like one of the most common comments, whether it be face-to-face or I get dms or you know, emails from people when they listen to this podcast is obviously it's the science of motherhood and whilst we're focusing on motherhood, we do talk about women's health generally. Mm-hmm. And the number one thing that people ask me, 'cause you know, I was in medical research and they're like, why is there not more stuff on women's research, and I'm just [00:12:30] like, because we are complex creatures, apparently.

[00:13:13] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Exactly.

[00:13:48] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Good questions. I think that the minute I had the idea, I, I, you know, was it a hundred percent it was. I really think this is what I'm gonna [00:14:00] do. It was weird. It was, um, I have to say, I'm like, I'm quite a, is spiritual the right word? Or quite like, I've used the word intuitive and there was like this gut feel of like, I've had this idea is like, this is, I don't know why, but I'm, this is going to be what I do.

[00:14:15] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Then, yeah, so that was like the initial mm-hmm driver right. So I started going and speaking to like organisations that focused on fem tech to understand my market. I started missing a few tutorials to go to these Commercial Nation courses and my and my friend's like, what are [00:14:30] you doing? You're like trying to be a doctor. I'm like, I'm telling you, this is like really a really interesting and like hearing what other people are doing and like people are creating in the healthcare space and I wanna be part of that. And then I guess along the way, like obviously wanted to, um, do internship to really be in the hospital, have that experience because I really did love being in the hospital.

[00:15:36] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:06] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Mm-hmm. And then therefore not going to work as much or earlier time, and therefore we're impacting the economy because we are over half the global population. Mm-hmm. Just to remind everyone. No, just two. Remind new one just a little At home. Yeah. At home we really significant and yeah, I think it was the more I, I like, I spoke to him like we did focus groups, a mixture of surveys across women from 18 to 75 [00:16:30] and we segmented based on like what their health needs were and then also like what their sentiments towards the healthcare system was.

[00:17:16] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: So there was that and then I guess coming to the AI question, it was probably I knew there was perform, uh, internship. It was probably like a year and a half into the company when I, I told you about Nakatomi, who were crazy enough to be like [00:17:30] without AI yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we'll try and do this and we're also gonna invest in you and we don't really invest in companies, but we're going to invest in you. Mm-hmm. That was like game changing because I had a group of people not only believe in me, but also actually have the, the skillset to build what I needed. Yeah. And then I think AI, just like, you know, Chat GPT had just come out and they said, listen, not sure if you thought about this, but would you use AI?

[00:18:15] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:32] Dr Renee White: No, I, I agree with you. Yeah. When I've made all of my kind of big career decisions, like people have said to me like, what was it? And I was like, there's no pivotal moment. There was just a feeling.

[00:18:54] Dr Renee White: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's, that's awesome story. Okay, let's dive into, 'cause we keep talking [00:19:00] about Ovum, we keep talking about what this amazing product is. What is it like give us your, I, I'd love to know what your like elevator pitch is for it and essentially. What do you envisage it providing women?

[00:19:51] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: And therefore we know, lead to more engagement in healthier behaviors and better health outcomes for women. But at a population level, what we're doing is collecting [00:20:00] the largest women's health, uh, longitudinal AI data set to feed back into research to address the gender bias in research, but also AI. And so our mission is to transform every woman's experience of healthcare and to begin to close the gender health gap, which we know is costing our global economy $1 trillion annually.

[00:20:30] Dr Renee White: I'd love to know because I feel like I've had, I've had a, a personal experience with a healthcare here in Tassie, which has been quite enlightening, shall I say. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So I would, I would like, I look at stuff like this and go, this has potential to really shake up the industry, but also I think is, um, quite an empowering product as well, so I would love a case example.

[00:21:40] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: So when I describe it through a case example, we take 45-year-old Isabel who's going through perimenopause, often she's experiencing a lot of really individualised symptoms. She's seeing various different doctors usually getting no answers, having numerous tests, probably still not getting any answers, and then trying to instigate all these lifestyle changes 'cause she knows that [00:22:00] like this is like a symbol of potentially other chronic disease, like heart disease, but finding it really overwhelming so she can download Ovum, sorry, got my phone and she can download Ovum and is met with this really compassionate and personalised onboarding experience.

[00:23:04] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:45] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:21] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Which you've asked Ovum to set for you, your cycle tracking, your monitoring, anything Ovum monitoring for you. So always intuitively check in with you [00:24:30] about something that you've been discussing. It could be an appointment, it could be a new medication, it could be your latest goal to run 10 Ks a week.

[00:24:39] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Um, Ovum is there as your health assistant and so that's just like a very brief kind of insight into what it can do. Obviously we haven't released this demo version to anyone yet, so Yeah. Anyone's listening, please sign up for early access. I will also note we have now pregnancy mode. Obviously not necessarily relevant to Isabel in this case example, but now with Ovum you can actually from, you know. Not [00:25:00] wanting to get pregnant, to wanting to get pregnant and even getting pregnant after pregnancy Ovum used daily the whole time. So you can actually switch into a pregnancy mode out of a pregnancy mode and over more contextualise that you're in your postnatal period. Mm-hmm. It will remember that. And so when it's giving you answers, giving you responses, it's all personalised to your health journey.

[00:25:44] Dr Renee White: My goodness, that's, that sounds amazing. Okay. I have a couple of questions from that where like, obviously people are probably thinking, where's this data coming from? How is Ovum able to, [00:26:00] you know, provide us with these insights and, and you know, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:27:07] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yep. Um, and that's what we've really found and then on top of that, we are creating a knowledge library. We call it retrieval augmented generation and it's a way of reducing hallucinations and bias in AI. So that's being created from at the moment, the Australian guidelines that are, you know, very women's, you know, women focused and obviously at the same time is, I'm actually speaking to Ovum every single day, training it [00:27:30] through different clinical situations, training it to be representative of women, and we also have women on the team who are doing that, or you know, we have men whose partners are doing that.

[00:28:20] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: It's like employment. It's biased, so like it's, you know, that's like an important industry that, you know, hopefully data that's more specific could help.

[00:29:06] Dr Renee White: I can clearly have like a conversation quite readily. But something like switched in my brain after I had a baby, and there was many, many moments in those first six weeks when I was dealing with health professionals and they were talking at me, and there is no way I would [00:29:30] let them speak to me like that in everyday life. And I remember there was like this one incident and we ended up, my husband was like with me at the time and we walked out and he just like looked at me and he was like, what the hell just happened then? You know and he was like, I. Why didn't you tell them to like, just stop? 'cause they kept talking and my baby, I was trying to feed my baby and she was screaming 'cause I wasn't organised with like other things.

[00:30:53] Dr Renee White: And I thought, I'm 40 by the way, so like Yeah. You know, I'm thinking about perimenopause. I've got friends who are like kind of [00:31:00] going through it at the moment. Mm-hmm. Leading up to my period. I started to get these dizzy spells and I thought, this is really weird. I've never had this before and as I was kind of approaching my day for my period, which I do on a, on a track thing, 'cause I'm not on the pill. Yeah. And I was like, they started to like really intensify and I was like, this can't be a coincidence of like shifts in hormones approaching this particular day and these dizzy spells getting worse and worse. Anyways, cut a long story short, I [00:31:30] was like, that's it. I'm gonna go to the doctor's, I'm gonna get a blood test.

[00:32:23] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Not alone in that. A lot of the women I've spoken to,

[00:32:26] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: have had this.

[00:32:28] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: I know. It's massive. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:29] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Okay. Well [00:33:30] then maybe you should be put, maybe you should be seeing the doctor then. I mean, like as in I, yeah,

[00:34:24] Dr Renee White: They're gonna tell me I've gotta stop eating eggs. I eat eggs every morning. I eat whole foods, [00:34:30] like, you know, liver and meat, blah, blah, blah. The first thing she says to me after I say, oh my God, my cholesterol's high. She goes, forget about it. Don't worry about it. And I was like, huh? I was like, I just got told that I have to change my whole diet and then I'll see them in 12 months. And she's like, let me show you something. So I was not aware of this, but evidently there's this like platform that they can like plug in.

[00:34:58] Dr Renee White: Yeah, you can see [00:35:00] the, all the risk of it. Yeah. And she was like, see the green? She goes, you are at 1% Renee. You could not get any lower in terms of like, is it cardiovascular disease risk? And I was just like 10 year risk. I was like, you have got to be joking I was furious, Ariella I was furious. I was so, cross and and the thing that really annoyed me is 'cause. She like the, this second doctor who knew exactly what you're talking about. She's like, Renee, it's [00:35:30] holistic. You need to look at it as a holistic perspective. She like

[00:35:36] Dr Renee White: she was like, look at a patient, were Yeah, a like. Older, white male smoker, drinking, overweight, like all these, all these other risk factors, fine. We would be having a conversation about, you know, having a look at your diet, probably, which I think she even said to me, we're really not sure that diet even changes cholesterol anymore. Like I think that [00:36:00] research has been debunked, but nevertheless. This is for educational purposes, everyone. You're not getting medical advice, but yes, the point is, is that all it would've taken for this person in the initial stage is to plug my data into this platform and go, oh,

[00:36:18] Dr Renee White: It's high.

[00:36:19] Dr Renee White: but given every other part of your human body and lifestyle factors, you're gonna be okay for a bit.

[00:37:06] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: I'm just checking that there's nothing else I need to do and then as women, cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of women. Mm-hmm. And estrogen is cardioprotective. So I just wanna note that if our estrogen is going down in menopause perimenopause, that's can land to increasing in metabolic disease. Yep. Or cholesterol. But in a situation what, like, what happened here is like your control was taken away, [00:37:30] which led to you feeling anxious, which leads to like, what sounds like, like this, this small trauma response where you like, had this really horrific experience in the healthcare system broke your trust.

[00:38:11] Dr Renee White: that's what I kept thinking. Like all I kept thinking was there was two things that I got actually got really cross about. The first one I thought to myself is if, if I was elderly, right, like I would then be compelled to have to come back to the doctors, pay another God knows [00:38:30] what nomination fee, but I would have to try and get myself back to the doctors. Like that's a logistical nightmare for older people. Mm. And then secondly, yes, I, I'm like, I'm a well educated, like I have a PhD in biochemistry. Yeah. And I'm sitting here Googling going, how do I reduce my cholesterol through diet, you know? Yeah.

[00:39:07] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Well, I like as in, I think I touched on this, like I had chronic migraine. Um, I was in the health, I was in the health system as a doctor. Yeah. And I still struggled. Yeah. Like I really struggled and I had chronic, chronic symptoms and it took really long for me to be medicated. I understand. We don't wanna over medicalise and we don't wanna overprescribe, but it got to the point of, like I was having, migraines every day. Every single day. It wasn't like nausea, [00:39:30] vomiting in a room. I had debilitating brain fog, cognitive fatigue, facial pain. Um, it was dizziness if about dizziness. Mm-hmm. Like standing up. I remember being at the, OR like, like I had, like had vertigo, but it wasn't vertigo like, it was like a bit vestibular for anyone that's just kind of like your internal balance system.

[00:40:20] Dr Renee White: I'm so complexed by it.

[00:40:46] Dr Renee White: exactly. Yeah.

[00:40:47] Dr Renee White: it's not cheap right. It's not, and I lucky that I have not a flexible work environment, you know? Yeah. All those kinds of things.

[00:40:55] Dr Renee White: And it takes forever to get into a doctor here in Tasmania. I'm not sure what it's like in Melbourne, but it [00:41:00] takes forever.

[00:41:02] Dr Renee White: Yeah. It's, it's crazy. Um, speaking of doctors though, like I feel like we're gonna try and put them out of a job with Ovum. What are your thoughts on that? Like, do you think it's gonna reduce the need for people to seek out GPs and like I, I guess, have you got something in the tech where it's kind of like, okay, this seems like a red flag, so we're gonna suggest to them that they need to go and [00:41:30] see a medical professional and do you, I guess my, it's like, you know, third angle of that is do you suggest what type of medical professional, whether it's Allied healthcare, you know, whatever.

[00:42:31] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Mm. So we did have some case examples of women were reporting quite severe, like post-op complications and immediately said, call triple zero, go straight to hospital. Yeah. So stopping women going from acute and to chronic. Yeah. Which is a whole nother healthcare cost. Yeah. Um, it's getting them to see doctors earlier when they need to or other allied health, and also giving doctors a bit of a kind of backstory of like, this is like a bit of a history. Like you can, like, don't need to sit and take a whole history from the beginning, but also you can take a history that's really relevant to the [00:43:00] woman in front of you, because I think half the time is. And sitting on the computer asking them, you know, the questions and if you haven't seen this doctor before, you feel like by the end of it, you haven't really gotten to the point of what you need out of the appointment.

[00:43:53] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Being something that can help, you know, hospitals at some point provide better women's healthcare. You know, obviously this is like a distant, uh, [00:44:00] dream right now, but, you know, we are doing clinical trials for a reason so that we have really good clinically validated data that Ovum is a tool for women and engages and more in preventative health behaviors. Mm. And from my beta and all the research I've done so far, I. I have a feeling of the results we're going to get, but it would be great to, you know, get these papers out, publish papers that validate it to hospitals and clinicians. Yeah. And we have a lot of clinicians that are super supportive. Yeah. I will say that like, you know, my professors that are supporting me with the [00:44:30] PhD, I have professors that are advisors. Um, so there are doctors, there's just a range of doctors, as you know, and there's doctors are very forward thinking and there's doctors that aren't. And it's about finding the right doctor. I think as well.

[00:45:09] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yeah. Academia. It can be a bit, it's a mindset like that.

[00:45:13] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Very much.

[00:45:45] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Sure. So we are launching to market in May, so probably end of May, I would say rather than beginning, which is super exciting. Um, we're actually launching on so it'll be Android and Apple available for everyone. It's $14.99 per [00:46:00] month or you can pay it forward and pay, um, $24.99 per month. So that's a pay it forward to another woman who can't afford it. Goes to our financial aid pool where we'll distribute it to clinics and um, non-for-profit groups to distribute to women in need. Whether that's from low socioeconomic groups or certain cultural backgrounds, and that's really to get into the hands of women who really need it, but also to increase our diversity in our data.

[00:47:05] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Majority of the women in that I think is 3,200. So they were scared to bring up anything to do with like health concerns, menstrual health, menopause, because they were scared of being discriminated against and that's pretty shocking. So I'm hoping Ovum works as a safe place for women in the workplace can actually speak, ask questions, and again, have the information to be like actually I do need to seek help for this. Mm-hmm. And I do need to take that time to look after myself [00:47:30] right now. So I'm more productive at work and I feel happier in my workplace. Yeah. I feel safe in my workplace. I've got an exciting, um, partner that we can't speak to yet, but that we will be announcing hopefully soon. But I think it's also, you know, if you download it for yourself also, you know, speaking to your employer, if you know they're very women's health focused and saying, yeah, this something you'd get for your, for your staff. Um, I think

[00:47:55] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Think that's gonna be Yeah. Research side as well.

[00:48:11] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yeah, it's a rapid fire.

[00:48:23] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Trust your instinct and if you don't feel something's right, feel concerned. Ask the [00:48:30] question, like, stand up for yourself. Mm-hmm. You know yourself better than any health professional. Yeah. That would be my advice. Agreed. And they should be listening to you if you are really not sure about something

[00:49:01] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Uh, I do listen to Diary of a CEO.

[00:49:08] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Such a good podcast. I, you know, I don't actually listen to a lot of podcasts because I'm not always finding that I have the most time, but I always leave that podcast being like, I. I love the chat. I love the chat. I love the, the quotes that come out of it, the lessons, the people, like the diversity of people that on that podcast is fantastic. Mm-hmm. And there's a lot of really good women's [00:49:30] women's health ones on there as well.

[00:49:33] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Is that the exercise physiologist? The In the data in, yeah. Yes. I love that.

[00:49:41] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yeah, like doctors don't learn about nutrition and exercise. No, I was, I was sitting there and I just got diagnosed with PCOS. Again, a doctor didn't read my bloods right. And I had to be like, these aren't right. Oh, that's not right. And then I had PCOS, so I was right, but if I wasn't a doctor, I wouldn't have, and I did put it into Ovum as well and it did [00:50:00] say that my hormones were out of range and things that when I was told they were normal.

[00:50:05] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: So, you know, um, there you go. But anyway, sidetrack. Yes. I did love, I loved that podcast. So for a girl with PCOS as well where cortisol and all the stuff really affects your weight and

[00:50:28] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Ooh, [00:50:30] okay. I have a candle. I actually have at the moment, Troy Van's new fragrance candle. It's really good. I have this really nice Japanese like perfume. It's like a, it's just a very relaxing scent. So I always like to spray that on before bed and I have a magnesium spray, which I always, um, put on the bottom of my feet before I go to sleep. And my lamp.

[00:51:03] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: No, thank you so much. I really, really enjoy this. Great questions, great conversation. You. Completely natural with this. You are so good at,

[00:51:27] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yes. So Instagram [00:51:30] is Ovum ai. Also, if you type us in Google Ovum AI, we, we are the first that comes up. You can go to our website there and if you, there are a few links on throughout all of the website where you can sign up for early access. So you'll get access to an earlier release, probably like two weeks out. So you might get it earlier in May and we'll probably ask a lot of those women who are, you know, part of our early access cohort. We actually have so many, which is amazing. Is to give us, like, have that opportunity to give us direct feedback because it's all, you know, made by [00:52:00] women for women, and so we're always asking for that feedback. So if you're really interested in giving insights and things as well, you'll definitely be part of that and you can opt in when you sign up to be contacted for that.

[00:52:14] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yes, please. Please do.

[00:52:46] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: People think like as in in the hospital though, like I remember people would be like, are you like my doctor? Yes. I'm like, how old are you? Like are you 21? And I'm like, no, I'm actually not. But thank you. You made my day.

[00:52:59] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: Yes. [00:53:00] Good skincare. That is for sure.

[00:53:08] Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks: thanks for having me.

[00:53:28] Dr Renee White: You've just listened to another [00:53:30] episode of The Science of Motherhood proudly presented by Fill Your Cup, Australia's first doula village. Head to our website I fill your cup.com to learn more about our birth and postpartum doula offerings where every mother we pledge to be the steady hand that guides you back to yourself. Ensuring you feel nurtured, informed, and empowered so you can fully embrace the joy of motherhood with confidence. Until next time, bye.