Meanwhile, a Californian firm called Hatch Baby, which makes smart changing mats, has received an undisclosed investment from Amazon’s Alexa fund (Amazon is the world’s largest marketplace for baby products). “Across the spectrum, investors are really keen to find companies that solve ‘pain points’.” Forbes included Owlet on its list of the next billion-dollar startups in 2016 Workman has raised about $50m (£39m) in venture capital. “Technology has definitely become a major theme in parenting, everything from software to hardware to data to artificial intelligence,” says Owlet’s CEO, Utah-based father-of-three Kurt Workman. You go through more training to be a driver than a parent. It has already become a must-have item among Hollywood parents: actor Jessica Alba has revealed that, before buying the stocking for her youngest child, she had been getting up to listen to his breathing as often as every hour. It will go on sale for £299.Īlso exhibiting is the latest version of Owlet, a baby sock that measures temperature, heart rate, oxygen saturation and movement. It relays information (temperature, heart rate and so on) to a small screen that a parent wears on their wrist, alerting the wearer if the baby’s breathing rate falls, or if he or she rolls on to their front. “It’s incredible to see how fast it has developed over the past five years.”Īmong the products on show this year is Bluebell, a waterproof monitor that was developed by two former healthcare management consultants and a former NHS data analyst. “Whereas previously we would have got this more from family and friends, we are using whatever tech we can,” she says. The event’s manager, Susanne Rauberger, argues that technology not only helps parents feel “as connected to their baby as possible”, but also provides “reassurance and peace of mind”. At the Baby Show (the UK’s leading baby and pregnancy expo, which takes places in London and Birmingham), tech companies that specialise in tracking devices and wearables vie for space with more traditional brands such as the bottle manufacturer Tommee Tippee. As soon as I stopped using it, my confidence in my parenting abilities increased drastically.” First-time parents hold a newborn, realise they have never done anything like it before – and turn to our phonesīabytech is not something that people without babies think much about, but that doesn’t mean tech people aren’t thinking about it: the app stores are full of products with names such as Baby Manager and Glow Baby Newborn Tracker. “I was using this app so I would stop being so anxious, but the level of information it was giving me was making me way more anxious. She used Feed Baby compulsively – following its cues, ignoring its ads – until one day in January, when she had a revelation. Aoife has graphs that show her how long Jenny has slept and how regular her “nappy events” were. Jenny is part of a generation whose entire lives will be quantified – sometimes all the way from conception, thanks to fertility tracking apps such as Kindara and Clue. You can track growth, you can track length and weight, teeth, baths. If you’re giving medicine, how much medicine you give. You can track a nappy, what was in the nappy. If you’re bottle feeding, how much formula they took. If you’re breastfeeding, what side you’ve breastfed on and for how long. “You set up your baby, you say when your due date was and when they were born. “It’s really, really simple,” Aoife explains from her home in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It has been downloaded more than 1m times.īefore she had recognised her mother’s scent or gripped her finger, Jenny was emitting a rich stream of data. The developer, Penguin Apps, describes it as “the only app you will need to care for your little one”. A few weeks before Jenny was born, her mother, Aoife, downloaded a free “breastfeeding and baby tracker” app called Feed Baby and began playing around with it. Yet her cocooned life has been substantially mediated by technology.
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