Breast-feeding smart sensor tells parents how much milk their baby is drinking

By Luke Dormehl November 9, 2016

Being a new parent is tough enough, which is why it makes perfect sense to delegate some of the myriad newfound tasks which come along.

One such job? Keeping track of how regularly your little one nurses, and how much milk they’re drinking as a result.

That’s the mission statement of Momsense, a company that manufactures a specially designed miniature sensor for exactly this task. Momsense’s smart sensor can be placed on a child’s jawline and will then work out how much a baby is drinking by listening to the sounds they make, a bit like a nursing stethoscope of sorts.

The technology is based on research carried out by Momsense researchers in 2013, which revealed that acoustic signals taken from baby swallows have unique patterns that correlate with the amount of milk consumed. This insight was later tested in studies involving hundreds of moms, during which a large number of acoustic signals were recorded and analyzed.

A little like a fitness tracker, Momsense’s smart tech lets users drill down to get vital data — although in this case it’s milk consumed per feeding and time spent per breast, rather than steps walked or lengths swam. The overall idea, however — to empower customers by putting them in control of their data — remains the same.

New parents even have the option of listening to the sound using headphones, should they so wish.

Momsense’s tools connect to smartphones via a 3.5mm headphone jack — thereby making it sadly incompatible with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus handsets — and requires an iOS or Android app developed by the company. The whole setup will set you back $89, and can be purchased either via Momsense itself or stores including Target, Babies R Us, and Bed Bath and Beyond.

If you’re a recent parent looking for the perfect smart device to help improve your life, this could well be it. Especially since you probably won’t have any further use for that personal sleep-tracking wearable you’ve been enjoying for the past couple of years!

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I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…

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