If you have ever had the pleasure of being hooked up to a breast pump, you will be well familiar with the rather loud noise they make.
And while technology anywhere else as we know it (iPhones, tablets, electric cars) are getting sleeker, better and more user-friendly by the day, it seems the good old breast pump has been well left behind and outdated.
Which is what American Samantha Rudolph, along with her husband, Jared Miller, set out to do something about back in 2014.
And although Rudolph was not yet a mother herself at the time, she knew that she wanted to be one day, and not only that, but that she also planned on returning to work once baby was ready.
Fast forward two years, and Rudolph and her husband are parents to an eight-month-old boy and founders of Babyation, a brand new breast pump that does indeed offer a quieter, more comfortable and discreet experience.
“We don’t mean to be dramatic, but we think this breast pump will literally change the lives of many women,” Rudolph recently told The Huffington Post.
What sets this breast pump apart is, for starters, the breast shields designed to emits a much quieter sound than many existing products. As well as this, the bottles for the Babyation pump collect milk through long tubes, something that gives women the option to keep their shirts on while pumping and can lessen the need for a private space.
“There are women who are exclusive pumpers or pumping for their babies in the NICU who could be able to spend more time cuddling their babies because there will now be room for them against the mother’s chest where the bottles used to be,” Rudolph explains. “There are executives who will pump on their own schedules instead of fighting for the one lactation room available for multiple women.”
And the innovative design doesn’t even end there.
The Babyation pump also comes with an app, which allows mums to adjust the speed and suction and keeps track of preferred settings. Through sensors on the outside of the bottles, the app will also track how much milk each breast expresses, the length of the pumping sessions, which side(s) the mums pumped on, the time of the last pumping sessions and more.
“It will have a timer, and you can program it to automatically begin pumping,” Rudolph said.
As of today, the husband and wife team have created a functional prototype for the pump, approved by a pediatrician and lactation consultant. In order to finalize the design and manufacture the product, they launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $50,000.
Many industry experts are cheering the new invention on, well aware that new developments in the world of breast pump technology are much-needed.
“Until recently, there hasn’t been any competition, and therefore, there hasn’t been any incentive to innovate,” Rudolph told HuffPost, adding, “There is a captive audience in breastfeeding mums because if they want to continue nursing while being away from their children, a breast pump isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.”
What do YOU think? Anyone would have preferred a more modern breast pump, or were you happy with the one you had? Let us know in the comments or tweet us at @Herfamilydotie
