Mothers slam controversial gadget that lets you breastfeed baby AND check your smartphone
Parents criticise gizmo designed to help mums keep in touch whilst feeding their bambino
Mums have hit out at a company that's seeking funding for a controversial new invention.
The Swipe and Feed baby bottle is seeking sponsors on Kickstarter and will allow mothers to check their phone while breastfeeding their child.
Some parents voiced opposition to the project on social media, with one Facebook commenter writing: “You’re pathetic if you purchase this…get off your phone and spend time with your precious bundle of joy!
"Social media/work can wait until the baby has gone to bed!! They’re only little for so long and you should enjoy them!”
Another raged: “OMG!!!! I thought that when feeding baby was the best time for Mum and baby to bond …what is wrong with people these days.”
The Swipe and Feed is marketed as a unique solution to a modern issue - wanting to stare at your phone while bottle feeding your baby.
Its inventor, a father from Virginia named Tim, created it after thinking of the idea during a late-night feeding.
“One morning around 3AM after bottle feeding my newborn son, Jack, the idea came to me,” Tim wrote on his Kickstarter campaign page.
“Every night I would wake up every two hours to the sound of Jack screaming for a bottle. As soon as he started feeding, Jack would nearly fall back asleep.
"For 25 minutes at a time, I was in a dark, quiet room feeding my son.
"It dawned on me that I could do some catch-up work while he fed, but I needed something to help me hold a bottle and my smartphone.
"I searched online for solutions, but nothing was on the market. That’s when I decided to seize the opportunity and solve the problem myself.”
So far Tim has raised over $7,000 of his $12,000 target.
The gizmo has been announced just one year after Pomona Valley Medical Centre released a study which suggested that mothers who use their phones as they breastfeed are causing long term harm to their babies.
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Dr Kateyune Kaeni, a psychologist specialising in maternal mental health said eye-contact is vital when building a relationship between mother and child.
And that using your phone while breastfeeding may result in your child developing anxiety.
“When babies are first born their vision is only basically from the breast to the mothers face," Dr Kaeni said.
“That’s as far as they can see. So babies do a lot of staring and bonding in that way.
“If baby is trying to make contact with you by noises or smiles and they can’t and they learn over time that they can’t rely on you to respond, it runs the risk of them becoming either anxiously attached to your or insecurely attached to you and they will ramp up their behaviour until you pay attention.”
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