What New Moms Actually Need: Melanie Kaplan on Postpartum Mental Health and Building oPPal

Melanie Kaplan is the founder and CEO of oPPal, a peer support platform for postpartum moms that matches new and expecting mothers, called Little oPPals, with trained, experienced mothers, called Big oPPals. She built it after her own experience with severe postpartum depression and anxiety, and she joined host Alexis Contos the same week oPPal launched nationally in May 2026.

In this conversation, Melanie shares the full story for the first time in this much depth. Four months after her first daughter was born, a weaning hormone crash collided with a birth control error, and Melanie left home for four nights, driving toward the ocean because she needed to see something bigger than what was happening inside her. Two years later, she found a video she had recorded for her daughter during those days, posted it on Instagram, and woke up to hundreds of messages from women sharing their own postpartum stories. That morning changed her career.

Melanie and Alexis talk about the early warning signs of postpartum anxiety that get dismissed as normal new mom worry, why the standard six week screening misses the gray area where most struggling mothers actually live, and the hole in American postpartum care where a woman goes from weekly appointments during pregnancy to almost nothing after birth. Melanie explains how she validated oPPal before writing a single line of it: a survey that drew over 300 responses in 48 hours, with more than 80 percent of moms saying they would mentor a new mother, and a beta that proved matches work best with someone outside your inner circle. She walks through the Big oPPal training, including the platform's central rule that every check-in starts with the mom, not the baby, and how oPPal's partnership with Phoenix Health creates a path to therapists trained in maternal mental health when peer support isn't enough. The episode closes with the legacy conversation, the story behind the logo drawn from her grandmother's handwriting, and what Melanie's daughter says her mommy does all day.

This episode is for anyone navigating postpartum, supporting someone who is, or building a company from lived experience.

Find oPPal: www.myoppal.com

Instagram: @myoppal

Join The Breadwinners community:

Subscribe on Substack: wearethebreadwinners.substack.com

Follow on Instagram: @wearethebreadwinners

Rate and review wherever you listen. It helps more women find this show.

If you are struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety, Postpartum Support International is at postpartum.net.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices