The Problems With Breastfeeding Go Way Beyond Breast Pumps
On the sixth floor of MIT’s Media Lab last weekend, babies and strollers seemed to outnumber laptops. The bathrooms were stocked with diapers, wipes, and essential-oil atomizers. Private spaces for nursing, with soft lighting and fuzzy pillows, abounded.
The occasion was a hackathon that brought together developers, designers, and others to, as the event’s title puts it, “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck.”One team developed LactPac, a waterproof kit for breastfeeding in the event of a natural disaster. Another suggested modifications to traditional Pueblo regalia to make it easier for Native American women to breastfeed. One of the tech-focused solutions was a virtual-reality app intended to increase oxytocin levels and thus help induce the release of milk for mothers
