No more crying over spilled milk
A few weekends ago, as some techies lined up to buy the new iPhone 6, others flocked to the MIT Media Lab to play with a different piece of technology — one that hasn’t seen an upgrade in decades. Over the course of that weekend, some 150 engineers, designers, developers, and health care professionals — many of them unaffiliated with MIT — gathered on campus for the “Make The Breast Pump Not Suck Hackathon.” The brainchild of a group of Media Lab students and researchers who are also parents, the hackathon aimed to revamp the breast pump, an aspect of modern parenthood that is nearly as maligned as it is necessary. Fighting the “ugly blue machine” Breast milk is the original superfood, full of allergy-fighting antibodies and brain-building fatty acids. The American Pediatric Association (APA) advises that babies drink it exclusively, if possible, until they’re 6 months old. Most American mothers return to work...