by Joyce Slaton posted in Products & Prizes

Let's face it, Braxton-Hicks contractions can feel a lot like real labor, particularly to a first-time mom, which sends a hefty percentage of pregnant women to the hospital to be strapped to arcane devices for monitoring, only to be sent home (it feels like) in disgrace and told to wait until real labor starts.
But what if there were a way to tell if what you're experiencing is Braxton-Hicks or true labor contractions" San Francisco tech company Bloomlife has just come out with a new stick-on wearable that attempts to do just that.

The Bloomlife "smart pregnancy wearable" is a small sensor that snaps into a patch that you stick, Band-Aid-like, onto your bump. Each patch lasts 7 days, and woman can wear them day or night.
The sensor measures contractions non-invasively by monitoring the electrical activity of the wearer's uterine muscle, and synchs with an iOS or Android app to show women the frequency and length of contractions.

Are the contractions regular" Short, long, or erratic" Are they getting more frequent or slowing down" The Bloomlife wearable doesn't diagnose your condition, but by giving you more information on what's going on inside your body, it can help you figure it out yourself.

The Bloomlife wearable is interesting, because typically "contraction trackers" are basically stopwatches, while actual hospital monitoring involves hauling your unwieldy self to the labor ...