It wasn’t until Frida founder Chelsea Hirschhorn experienced multiple pregnancy losses that she realised there was a gap in the promise her company made to serve women in every stage of postpartum. While Hirschhorn, a mother of four, already knew what recovery from birth looked and felt like, she was surprised to find that she dealt with similar pain and bleeding during and after her miscarriages. So she decided to do something about it.
“There’s nothing political about what a woman’s body goes through, regardless of how they arrived at the situation,” Hirschhorn tells Vogue of the decision to expand the brand’s recovery kits to cover all stages of necessary care, including after a miscarriage or abortion with its new Frida Recovery Kit for Incomplete Pregnancies. “These are physical needs that they have, and we are in a position to help them support those needs.”
Since launching her company in 2019, Hirschhorn has designed solutions to help mothers navigate the raw physicalities of childbirth, from C-section recovery bands to abdominal binders. “As holistic and comprehensive as that was, we were still neglecting to address the 2 million women who still experience some form of physical transition with their bodies during pregnancy loss even though it doesn’t end with a baby,” says Hirschhorn. That’s changed with the launch of the Frida Recovery Kit, which is curated to address what she calls “basically the entire bathroom experience.” Within the discreetly labeled shipping box, there’s one upside-down peri bottle, four pairs of disposable underwear, and six ultra-absorbent maxi pads. “In pregnancy loss, there is a spectrum of experiences that women can have,” explains Hirschhorn.
“If it’s an early stage, it may just be an extremely heavy menstrual period. Still, it will be a shock for women who are accustomed to using tampons or menstrual cups to hear from their OB-GYN that those aren’t permitted in the pregnancy loss healing process.” The kit also includes a personal note from Hirschhorn, which shares her experience with pregnancy loss. It’s meant to provide immediate “emotional handholding” gesture so that anyone reading it knows they aren’t alone.
Frida’s latest launch marks yet another opportunity to break taboos in the maternal health space, a mission the brand has championed since its global launch with a banned postpartum recovery-themed commercial at the Oscars and a first-of-its-kind primetime ad showing a breastfeeding mother during the Golden Globes. “Now we’ve lived up to our promise to support women through all phases of recovery, regardless of how their journey ended,” says Hirschhorn. “And we feel really good about that.”
This article originally appeared on Vogue.com.
