Slow Control, makers of the 10SFork that yells at you to eat more slowly, is working on a bottle that will help new parents and caregivers regulate the flow of their baby’s bottle. The Baby Gigl is a sleeve that goes over the baby’s bottle, detecting tilt, the motion of baby eating, and volume changes.
Slow Control debuted the Baby Gigl at CES in January and has launched an indiegogo campaign to bring it to market. The campaign will run March 24 through May 3, with the goal of shipping in September 2015.
The sleeve fits over Nuk brand bottles, which are included. The sleeve sends information about feedings to the Baby Journal app via Bluetooth, which can be disabled during the feeding to protect the baby from radiation. Data is collected and stored, then synced after the feeding is over and the bottle is removed from the sleeve.
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The sleeve will give instant feedback during the feeding with both light and sound alarms. The main goal of the Baby Gigl is to help the caregiver keep the bottle at an optimum tilt to pace the feeding based on how much milk or formula is left in the bottle. Too steep of a tilt can cause the baby to take in too much too fast and lead to spit up and an upset tummy, while too shallow of a tilt can allow air into the nipple, leading to excess gas and crying.
The Baby Gigl gives a warning when the bottle is tilted too high.
Because the Gigl also detects the feeding motion as the bottle moves to the baby’s suckle, it can warn the caregiver if the baby is doing a lot of work but the volume in the bottle isn’t changing, likely indicating that a lump has clogged the nipple.
Baby Journal also allows the parent to manually enter and track the baby’s weight and size, number of burps, wet/dirty diapers, sleep, mood, temperature, and vaccinations. There is also a picture gallery and a place to track milestones.
Hospital nurses gave me a paper journal to record feedings and diapers for each baby. With my first, I diligently filled it out and took it with me to the pediatrician in the early weeks. With my second, I’m not even sure I remembered to take it home from the hospital. Even though there are plenty of baby-tracking apps and plenty of diligent first-time parents with the actual time to enter information, eventually you forget here and there. Or altogether. I couldn’t tell you about my baby’s most recent feeding, let alone his past month.
Detailed feeding data in the Baby Journal app provides valuable information for pediatricians.
The automatic feeding data collection is what most excites pediatric expert, Dr Joseph Cohen who says “Pediatricians are used to relying on the recall of sleep-deprived parents for histories, including feeding. With Baby Journal 3.0 included with the Baby Gigl app, for the first time, parents can effortlessly give the pediatrician accurate and robust information regarding the infant’s feeding progress.”
One Gigl can connect to the app on multiple smart phones using Slow Control’s proprietary Cross Sharing Technology, so you only need one sleeve to stay with your baby and each caregiver can use the app on their phone to input feeding data. You can also track multiple Gigls with the app so you can keep one at home and send one to daycare also. That way, a working parent can see exactly how the baby’s feedings are going when they’re away.
Pre-sales from the Indiegogo campaign include two bottles for each sleeve, so you can always have a clean bottle ready. Early birds can grab a Gigl and two bottles for $75.