A Mission Born from the Depths of Grief; Why the World Needs "Fertility Intelligence"

Author: Fatemeh Khani

In collaboration with the R&D team at Demeter Fertility Technologies

Yesterday, at the beauty salon, a sentence slipped out of my mouth that I didn’t even expect myself.

I have known the salon owner for over a decade. Years of monthly visits, long and short conversations, and that quiet intimacy that gradually turns a service relationship into a friendship. When she asked, “It’s been a long time since you last came, where have you been?” I subconsciously replied: “I am just starting to emerge from the state of grief.”

This simple sentence was the summary of more than a year of my vague, heavy, and dark life.

On March 12, 2025 (22 Esfand 1403), my pregnancy suddenly came to an end at the very peak of hope. This event was not just a neutral date recorded in a hospital’s obstetrics file; it was the day I lost a piece of my future, my soul, and my being.

I was hospitalized at 25 weeks of pregnancy with a diagnosis of acute preeclampsia. Twenty-one days were spent in the ambiguity and anxiety of isolated hospital rooms. My body, my blood pressure, repeated vascular tests, my fetus’s growth—everything was monitored moment by moment; but the bitter reality was that the medical system, and we ourselves, realized far too late what a terrifying downhill slope we were on.

Ultimately, the pregnancy was terminated. My beautiful baby was born; but so small, so vulnerable, and far too early for natural development. Twelve days later, just as the most rudimentary feeding process had begun, his tiny body could not endure; his stomach bled, and he was gone.

After the delivery, I spent four days in the ICU touching the edge of life and death; in absolute loneliness, without the possibility of seeing my husband and family. Amidst the continuous beeping of monitors, the smell of alcohol, a wounded body, and a broken heart, one question repeated in my brain like a drill: Why did we find out so late?

Why, despite the fact that my husband and I had been researching, modifying our lifestyle, and preparing for months before the pregnancy, did we have no clear picture of the hidden process of preeclampsia and vascular risk patterns?

If we, with years of experience working at the edge of technology, product development, and access to information, faced this disaster so late, how do millions of other couples walk this path without these tools?

The Epidemiology of a Silent Crisis: When Statistics Scream

When I look at the latest official reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, I realize that my story is not an exception; it is a bitter and common rule in the global health structure. We are facing numbers behind each of which flows a full-scale human tragedy:

Maternal Mortality; A Tragedy Every Two Minutes: The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) globally is about 197 deaths per 100,000 live births. This means that annually, nearly 260,000 women worldwide die due to direct and indirect complications of pregnancy.
Preeclampsia; The Mysterious Vascular Poisoning: This multi-system disorder of the placental vasculature affects between 5% and 7% of all pregnancies worldwide and is responsible for the direct death of more than 70,000 mothers annually—14% of all obstetric deaths globally.
Hidden Deaths in the Womb: Annually, 1.9 million fetuses are stillborn after 28 weeks of pregnancy, and 2.3 million newborns die within the first 28 days of birth (the critical neonatal period).

If we take a specialized look at the leading causes of neonatal mortality in the first month of life, three main factors drive these statistics:

Complications of preterm birth: 36%
Intrapartum-related events and asphyxia: 24%
Severe maternal and neonatal infections (Sepsis): 16%

Preeclampsia sits exactly at the intersection of these disasters. When a mother develops this disorder, placental vascular resistance increases and blood supply is disrupted. According to clinical data, 20% to 25% of these fetuses suffer from severe Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). In developing regions, due to the lack of continuous monitoring of maternal biometric patterns, 10% to 12% of the fetuses of these mothers are lost before birth or due to forced preterm delivery to save the mother’s life.

The issue is not the treatment; the issue is the loss of the “golden time” due to scattered and analog data.

A scientific and epidemiological truth that is completely boycotted in public societal narratives is this: pregnancy is not just an issue of the woman’s body.

For years, the traditional medical and cultural system has viewed fertility as woman-centric. It is the woman who must undergo various tests, ultrasounds, hormonal interventions, and ultimately carry the heavy psychological burden of miscarriage or failure.

But modern biological data completely refutes this assumption. Research has proven that the male factor plays a direct role in more than 50% of cases of infertility, fetal defects, and recurrent miscarriages. Sperm quality, structural integrity, DNA fragmentation, paternal age, metabolic factors, and the man’s lifestyle affect not only initial fertilization but also the quality of placental formation, implantation, and even the occurrence of pregnancy vascular disorders (such as preeclampsia). Couples must be monitored as a unified biological unit, not as two separate elements with a delay in assessment.

I do not want to reduce a complex, multi-factorial medical condition like preeclampsia to a single cause. However, as an expert, I cannot ignore environmental and epigenetic factors. During my pregnancy, I was under very high occupational pressure and stress. Looking back today, this issue serves as a serious social warning for me.

A pregnant woman is not merely an active labor force who must work with the same capacity and tense tasks until the very last day before delivery. Her body is consuming systemic energy to create another human being. Continuous psychological pressures, toxic behaviors in the workplace, job insecurity, and unrealistic expectations of pregnant women are uncounted factors that directly affect cortisol secretion, vasoconstriction, and drastic changes in blood pressure.

Supporting pregnant women in work environments is a social, economic, and human responsibility. Pregnancy is a matter of public health, the future of the workforce, and gender equity; it is not a private issue hidden behind closed doors at home. Unfortunately, during those sensitive days, I was caught working with toxic people who made my condition worse and worse. Even on the days I was in the hospital, I received emails that increased my nervous pressure and tension. I was unaware, and the organization and the people in front of me were also unaware and toxic.

If you are pregnant, or if your loved one is pregnant and does not have a peaceful work environment, I suggest quitting the job. Of course, if your financial situation is not favorable, you probably think that quitting is a mistake, but know this: losing a job is better than losing your angel.

The Birth of DLady; Moving Beyond Simple Trackers Toward “Fertility Intelligence”

The world no longer needs a simple period tracker application. The market is saturated with digital calendars whose job is merely to record days. Today’s real need is access to an integrated “Fertility & Pregnancy Intelligence” platform.

For this reason, we registered the company Demeter Fertility Technologies. Having experienced the loss of our life’s angel due to acute preeclampsia, we became certain of the path we had chosen so that DLady could be the answer to this global gap.

DLady is an AI-powered fertility & pregnancy health companion platform that connects scattered biometric data, clinical symptoms, sperm health factors, lab results, lifestyle data, and in the future, wearable devices (wearables) of both the man and woman into an intelligent layer. Our goal is to create an “Early Warning System” to raise awareness among men and women, introducing them to the appropriate lifestyle to maintain their reproductive health, helping them monitor their fertility health, and subsequently—with the choice of having a child and pregnancy—identifying hidden risk patterns (such as preeclampsia or fetal growth restriction) before reaching a crisis point. At every stage of the journey, from the period of loneliness to the time after marriage and during pregnancy, it generates structured and understandable reports for the attending physician.

Founder-Market Fit and the Growth Model

The global digital reproductive health market is deeply thirsty for change. According to WHO reports, infertility affects about 1 in 6 people during their lifetime. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, due to rising marriage ages, urban lifestyles, and the skyrocketing costs of assisted reproductive technologies like IVF, the need for an intelligent preventive system has reached its peak.

We did not build this platform merely by reading books; we have lived this chain of pain. But to solve it, the powerful tool of expertise and experience accompanies us.

Become a Member of DLady and Join Us in this Difficult Mission

Today, our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has launched for Android and iOS, and without heavy marketing costs, we have received strong signals of organic user acquisition.

Free access to core needs: For mass acquisition and breaking educational taboos in society.
Premium access: To provide analytical reports, AI insights, and personalized care systems.

Although we hope to attract strong investors to provide all features free of charge to everyone, if you have financial difficulties, please be sure to email us so we can grant you premium access without requiring payment.

We are currently working to soon establish the infrastructure to connect laboratories, pharmacies, insurance companies, and fertility clinics.

The capital we are seeking to raise today is not for a raw or unproven idea; it is for the scalability of a product whose pain is global, whose market is large, and whose team is equipped with execution capability. This capital will be spent on developing advanced AI models, clinical pilots, and expanding DLady’s penetration as the intelligent layer of reproductive health in the MENA region.

Grief is No Longer Merely Passive; It is Data

It took more than a year before I could say in response to a friend: “I am just starting to emerge from the state of grief.”

But today I know that this grief is not meant to remain merely a hidden wound in the dark. This grief has now been redefined:

It has turned into data;
It has turned into a product;
It has turned into a warning for workplaces;
And it has turned into a company that wants to transform the path to parenthood for millions of couples from a dark and surprising corridor into a conscious, safe, and controlled journey.

DLady was determined from the heart of a great loss, but it stands to build a smarter future. If you are an investor who understands the value of binding modern technologies with the deepest vital human needs in a multi-billion-dollar market, it is time to step forward with us.

Connect with us on the following messengers: