The results are in, and the "Mighty Mom" is the winner! This breast pump beat out nine other competitors in an MIT contest to design a breast pump that doesn't "suck."
Mighty Mom is a hands-free pump, with an easy set up. It automatically logs and tracks data from the wearer. The team behind Mighty Mom says that the pump is discrete enough to use anywhere, even during a commute, which is perfect for a busy mom. It clips onto the waist with a utility belt, modeled after Batman's famous utility belt, which holds every item he needs.
The design team's tagline says, appropriately, that "every mom is a superhero."
"The breast pump sucks but we all love our babies more. So there seemed to be an obvious need to fix this," said Erin Freeburger, a member of the "Mighty Mom" design team. "And, I think another thing was bringing people's voices to the fore front and realizing that everyone has the same three to five key issues with [the breast pump]."
The team won a $3,000 prize and the opportunity to pitch its breast pump to investors in Silicon Valley.
MIT held the Hackathon contest in which, over two days, 150 breast pump users, engineers and designers met at MIT to discuss ideas to improve the design of the breast pump. Traditional breast pumps are cumbersome and inconvenient; the Mighty Mom team pokes fun at them in its competition video. The video shows a woman, holding a clumsy breast pump and walking into a phone booth, like Superman changing into his costume. She trips over the breast pump's cord as she walks into the booth. Then, a cut later, the woman walks out smiling, with a Mighty Mom breast pump attached, visible on her belt.
Don Blair, a member of the Mighty Mom team, said that he hopes to look over some of the suggestions made at the Hackathon about improving breast pump design, and to see if the Mighty Mom team can come up with any more improvements to its product.
Freeburger agreed that the Mighty Mom pump could be improved and said that she thought the product had the potential to significantly enhance breast pump technology.
"This is what we did in two days," Freeburger said. "If we push it out there, people give their feedback, and people respond, this could really change something."
