Terms of use

Who we are

The Mama Years is made by Courtney Garland. Courtney is a NICU Registered Nurse, an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and a Paediatric Sleep Consultant.

If you knew this service as Mama Linc, this is the same thing. The name has changed. The person behind it has not.

These terms cover the app and the website. They apply every time you use either one. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the app, and please tell us why, because we would rather know.

What The Mama Years is, and what it is not

The Mama Years is education and support. It is somewhere to learn what is happening in your body, to keep track of the things you want to remember, and to hear from someone who has spent her career with mothers and babies.

Everything in it is general information. It was written for a lot of women. It was not written for you specifically, because we do not know your history, your pregnancy, your medications or your baby.

So, plainly. The Mama Years is not medical advice and it is not a medical service.

It does not replace your GP, your midwife, your obstetrician, your maternal and child health nurse or your lactation consultant. They know you. They can examine you, order tests and treat you. We cannot do any of those things.

Nothing here diagnoses anything. Nothing here is a prescription or a treatment plan. Using the app does not make Courtney your nurse, and it does not create a clinician and patient relationship between you and her, or between you and The Mama Years.

Please keep seeing the people looking after you. If something in the app disagrees with what your own doctor or midwife has told you, follow them, not us. They have the whole picture and we only have part of it.

If you are worried about you or your baby

Please contact your GP, midwife or maternity unit. Do not wait, and please do not use the app to work out whether it is worth calling. It always is.

If it is an emergency, call your local emergency number straight away. In Australia that is 000.

Never delay getting medical help because of something you read here, and never stop or change a treatment your provider has given you because of something you read here.

The Consult, and the AI inside it

The Mama Years Consult is not medical advice. If you are worried about your health or your baby's, please contact your GP, midwife, or maternity unit.

That is the line you will see in the app, and here is what sits behind it.

The free consult gives you answers Courtney wrote in advance for common situations. It is not reading your notes and it is not thinking about you. It matches what you tell it to something she has already written down.

The premium consult uses artificial intelligence built from Courtney's own material. It answers in her voice because it was made from her words. It is still software. It is not Courtney, it is not a nurse, and it is not a clinician of any kind. It can be wrong. It can miss something. It cannot see you, examine you, or know what your own team has already told you.

So please treat every answer as a good place to start a conversation with your own provider, not as the end of one.

The trackers

The app has trackers for your cycle, your pregnancy, your baby's kicks, your contractions, your daily log, feeding and growth. They are all free and they are staying that way.

They are there to help you notice things and to help you remember them. They are not monitoring you. Nobody is watching your entries as you make them, and no alert the app shows you has been read by a clinician before it reached you.

A few of them need saying properly.

The cycle tracker helps you understand your cycle and find your most fertile days for trying to conceive. It is not a form of contraception, and it should not be used to prevent pregnancy. If you are trying to avoid pregnancy, please speak with your GP or a sexual health service about reliable contraception.

The kick counter and the contraction timer are there to help you count, not to tell you what to do. If your baby's movements have changed, call your midwife or maternity unit whatever the count says. Trust the change, not the number.

The pregnancy and growth trackers show typical ranges. Babies are not typical. A measurement outside a range is a reason to ask someone, and a measurement inside one is not a reason to ignore something that still feels wrong to you.

Everything a tracker shows you is built on what you entered. If a date is out by a week, everything after it is out by a week too. Please check the important ones.

Your account

Your account is yours. Please keep your login to yourself.

You need to be 16 or older to open an account on your own. If you are younger than that, you can still use The Mama Years, and we would much rather you had support than went without it, but a parent or guardian needs to agree to these terms with you.

Please give us information that is true, especially dates. A due date that is out makes most of the app wrong at the same time.

If you invite a partner to share your view, they can see what you have shared with them. Only invite someone you want reading it. You can remove them again whenever you like.

Your data

What we do with your health data is set out in the privacy statement. That document is finished, every claim in it is checkable, and it is worth your five minutes.

The short version is the one on the signup page. Your health data is yours. We do not sell it, share it, or profit from it. Ever.

You can export everything you have logged, and you can delete your account, from inside the app, whenever you want. You do not have to ask us and you do not have to say why.

Courtney's work

The lessons, the videos, the guides and everything else Courtney has written belong to her.

Use them for yourself and your own family, with our blessing. Please do not copy them, republish them, sell them, or use them to run your own classes or your own service.

We add things and we change things as guidance changes. A lesson you liked may be updated or taken down.

Premium

Every tracker is free, and so is every safety feature. Premium adds the deeper insights, the full lesson library, and unlimited Consult with Courtney's full guide behind it. The Consult itself is not behind the paywall: you get it free every month, and Premium takes the limit off.

Premium is bought through the App Store or Google Play, on the phone you are holding. Apple and Google handle the payment and the receipt, and they handle cancellations too. You can cancel any time from your Apple or Google account settings, and you keep what you paid for until the period you have paid for runs out.

If a payment goes wrong, or you have paid and your access has not appeared, email hello@themamayears.com and we will sort it out.

If we get something wrong

We try very hard not to. Courtney reviews the clinical content herself and the sources are named where it matters.

We still cannot promise that the app will always be available, always be correct, or always be current. Guidance changes and mistakes happen.

To the extent the law allows, The Mama Years and Courtney Garland are not responsible for what follows if you rely on the app instead of your own healthcare provider. Nothing in these terms takes away any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law.

This is the reason we keep asking you to check with your own doctor or midwife. Not to cover ourselves. Because they are the ones who can actually help you.

If these terms change

If we change something that matters, we will tell you and we will ask you to agree again.

The version and the date at the top of this page tell you which document you agreed to, and we keep that record so you can always find out.

Ending your account

You can delete your account at any time, from inside the app.

We can close an account if someone is using The Mama Years to harm another person, or to take Courtney's work and pass it off as their own. That is the whole list.

Getting in touch

Write to hello@themamayears.com. A person reads it.