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"My daughter woke up every three hours for a bottle" I wonder if it's possible to automate night feeding of small children without waking anybody up. Sounds li

"My daughter woke up every three hours for a bottle" I wonder if it's possible to automate night feeding of small children without waking anybody up. Sounds like a good idea for a startup.

jipiboily 12y ago
Hard for breast feeding though hehe
- gknoy 12y ago
  It's easier with breastfeeding. Co-sleeping lets mama and baby be already close, so mom can go back to sleep, as can baby. The down side is, unless your bed is really big, Dad likely is going to spend the next year+ on the futon. (I did it. It was a sacrifice we were willing to make for the baby, and wasn't that bad. It beats being woken up for nighttime feedings.)
  - thom 12y ago
    Kudos. We all managed to fit in one big bed, and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives. In the UK the NHS fight pretty hard to discourage people from co-sleeping, and people very regularly do dangerous things like go to bed drunk with horrific consequences. But if you're sensible, it really does make your life easier, and I think our little guy's happier for it too.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Sounds like an artificial breast loaded with milk beforehand.
  - fistofjohnwayne 12y ago
    This is a joke, right?
    - guard-of-terra 12y ago
      No. This is supposed to be a useful fallback, kinda like babysitter latter in life.
rayiner 12y ago
A dad feeding a baby at 3am running on a few hours of sleep is pretty close to a robot.
japhyr 12y ago
It's exhausting, but it's really not something you want to automate. Whether through breastfeeding or a bottle, those feedings are pretty important bonding time. When my kid was in this stage I'd stumble in and give him a bottle, but I was always aware that I wouldn't be doing it forever, and someday soon I'd miss holding his little warm body against my chest every night in the darkness. I don't miss the exhaustion, but I do look back warmly on that middle-of-the-night time together.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  It's not something you want to automate every single time, but how about half the most inconvenient nights?
  - japhyr 12y ago
    My very non-scientific response: I want me or my wife, or a trusted caregiver involved in every feeding. When you feed your young baby, you're also checking them for all kinds of things - no choking, no vomit that needs to be cleaned up, is their sleep area still safe, etc. I'm all for automating and using technology to make difficult situations better, but this is really something where you do want human interaction every time.
    - guard-of-terra 12y ago
      "you feed your young baby, you're also checking them for all kinds of things" Which you won't check if you happen to have a quiet child that doesn't wake up during the night.
jcromartie 12y ago
This is why some mothers sleep with their babies, so that they can feed them without moving or being too disturbed.
DanBC 12y ago
Children die from feeding accidents. Automation would need to be excellent quality to avoid dead children. If you have the money to afford automatic feeding you probably have the money to afford an Au Pair or similar to help in the short term.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  "feeding accidents" In around threads people are suggesting for mother to sleep with their child. This can easily lead to constriction of said child. Happened all the time as late as XIX century. On the other side, I don't see how you can die from a soft rubber nipple. "Au Pair" I would actually pay quite some money to avoid interacting with unrelated human beings.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jaredhansen 12y ago
Probably a bad idea - there's a lot more going on in those feedings than just the food: To investigate the debate, Dr. Harlow created inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wood.[5] Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above all others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare wire mothers or cloth covered mothers. For this experiment he presented the infants with a cloth mother and a wire mother under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food and the cloth mother held no food, and in the other, the cloth mother held the bottle and the wire mother had nothing.[5] Overwhelmingly, the infant macaques preferred spending their time clinging to the cloth mother.[5] Even when only the wire mother could provide nourishment, the monkeys visited her only to feed. Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother/infant relationship than milk and that this “contact comfort” was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children. It was this research that gave strong, empirical support to Bowlby’s assertions on the importance of love and mother/child interaction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  We'll make our artificial feeder from the best cloth so infants will prefer it to their real mother :) Seriously, it's not for disappearing mother from their child's life, just back up during the inconvenient nighttime. Quiet children miss this in the first place because they don't wake up during the night. And they're fine.

"My daughter woke up every three hours for a bottle" I wonder if it's possible to automate night feeding of small children without waking anybody up. Sounds like a good idea for a startup.

jipiboily 12y ago

Hard for breast feeding though hehe

gknoy 12y ago
It's easier with breastfeeding. Co-sleeping lets mama and baby be already close, so mom can go back to sleep, as can baby. The down side is, unless your bed is really big, Dad likely is going to spend the next year+ on the futon. (I did it. It was a sacrifice we were willing to make for the baby, and wasn't that bad. It beats being woken up for nighttime feedings.)
- thom 12y ago
  Kudos. We all managed to fit in one big bed, and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives. In the UK the NHS fight pretty hard to discourage people from co-sleeping, and people very regularly do dangerous things like go to bed drunk with horrific consequences. But if you're sensible, it really does make your life easier, and I think our little guy's happier for it too.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Sounds like an artificial breast loaded with milk beforehand.
- fistofjohnwayne 12y ago
  This is a joke, right?
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    No. This is supposed to be a useful fallback, kinda like babysitter latter in life.

rayiner 12y ago

A dad feeding a baby at 3am running on a few hours of sleep is pretty close to a robot.

japhyr 12y ago

It's exhausting, but it's really not something you want to automate. Whether through breastfeeding or a bottle, those feedings are pretty important bonding time. When my kid was in this stage I'd stumble in and give him a bottle, but I was always aware that I wouldn't be doing it forever, and someday soon I'd miss holding his little warm body against my chest every night in the darkness. I don't miss the exhaustion, but I do look back warmly on that middle-of-the-night time together.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
guard-of-terra 12y ago
It's not something you want to automate every single time, but how about half the most inconvenient nights?
- japhyr 12y ago
  My very non-scientific response: I want me or my wife, or a trusted caregiver involved in every feeding. When you feed your young baby, you're also checking them for all kinds of things - no choking, no vomit that needs to be cleaned up, is their sleep area still safe, etc. I'm all for automating and using technology to make difficult situations better, but this is really something where you do want human interaction every time.
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    "you feed your young baby, you're also checking them for all kinds of things" Which you won't check if you happen to have a quiet child that doesn't wake up during the night.

jcromartie 12y ago

This is why some mothers sleep with their babies, so that they can feed them without moving or being too disturbed.

DanBC 12y ago

Children die from feeding accidents. Automation would need to be excellent quality to avoid dead children. If you have the money to afford automatic feeding you probably have the money to afford an Au Pair or similar to help in the short term.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
"feeding accidents" In around threads people are suggesting for mother to sleep with their child. This can easily lead to constriction of said child. Happened all the time as late as XIX century. On the other side, I don't see how you can die from a soft rubber nipple. "Au Pair" I would actually pay quite some money to avoid interacting with unrelated human beings.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jaredhansen 12y ago

Probably a bad idea - there's a lot more going on in those feedings than just the food: To investigate the debate, Dr. Harlow created inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wood.[5] Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above all others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare wire mothers or cloth covered mothers. For this experiment he presented the infants with a cloth mother and a wire mother under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food and the cloth mother held no food, and in the other, the cloth mother held the bottle and the wire mother had nothing.[5] Overwhelmingly, the infant macaques preferred spending their time clinging to the cloth mother.[5] Even when only the wire mother could provide nourishment, the monkeys visited her only to feed. Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother/infant relationship than milk and that this “contact comfort” was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children. It was this research that gave strong, empirical support to Bowlby’s assertions on the importance of love and mother/child interaction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow

guard-of-terra 12y ago
We'll make our artificial feeder from the best cloth so infants will prefer it to their real mother :) Seriously, it's not for disappearing mother from their child's life, just back up during the inconvenient nighttime. Quiet children miss this in the first place because they don't wake up during the night. And they're fine.