Sophie Epton is the founder and CEO of Elstori, a postpartum and early motherhood platform born from her own two-year descent into postpartum depression following her son's NICU stay and open-heart surgery. A serial entrepreneur long before motherhood, she took what that season stripped from her and turned it into the company she needed most and never had. Built by mothers, with mothers, for mothers, Elstori connects new and expecting parents with real guidance, preparation, support, and community in the season no one prepares you for. She is a mother of twin toddlers and the fiercest advocate for women deserving the care they need in motherhood.
← All profilesHis heart was never the thing that broke mine, the silence around me was.
Sophie Epton, Elstori
Read it the way it ran in print.
Her exclusive interview runs in the August 2026 issue, starting page 27. Below is the actual spread, page for page, exactly as it appears in print.
The early days: newborn twins, open-heart surgery, 41 days in the NICU. What was actually happening for you, and when did you realize this was beyond something you could push through?
When I was 18 weeks pregnant and we found out about my twin son having the heart condition Tetralogy of Fallot, my whole world just broke open. I never got to hold him as he was immediately transported to the children's hospital on ventilators and had open heart surgery at nine days old. Once he was home, I thought everything would feel magical. But once I had a chance to finally slow down and process what had happened to our little family, the postpartum depression crashed into me like a ton of bricks. And it didn't go away.
You came out of nearly two years of postpartum depression and started building. Where did that instinct come from, and what did it feel like to build again when you had barely found your way back?
During those six months of working on myself, it really started to occur to me how underserved and underdeveloped postpartum and early motherhood care is. I had been a successful entrepreneur for 14 years, and yet my postpartum experience almost took me out. If this could happen to me, it could and was most certainly happening to millions of women around the world, and something needed to change, desperately. I told my husband one day last year while driving in the countryside, and he told me he hadn't seen me this electric or fired up in years. That was it. On that day Elstori was born.
Read the full feature in the August 2026 issue.
Open the issue
