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Feeding Phoebe is one of the duller tasks of being a father, though it’s enlivened by having to break off every few minutes to see if I can help her burp. You either have the fun of a supernaturally loud belch coming from this tiny imp, or the jeopardy that she might chuck up the milk you’ve just forced down her. But the bit where she’s drinking is boring. She’s all about the milk (which obviously as the presenter of Food and Milk I approve of) and it can take ages. It’s hard to multi-task because you’ve got your hands full, but also you really have to pay attention to make sure the bottle is still in the baby’s mouth and she’s not dribbling everywhere, so although you can watch TV, it can’t be anything you have to concentrate on. My preference is to idly check Twitter or read stuff on the internet, which requires less than full attention, but it’s still tricky to achieve that. You have the baby in one arm and the bottle in the other hand, so even with the phone on a table it’s slightly tricky to do.
I wondered if anyone had yet invented an iPhone gizmo that would attach your iPhone to the baby's head, with perhaps another clip on it that would hold the bottle in place. But as far as I can see no one has put this together even as a joke. I mean, obviously it would be quite dangerous as your view of your baby’s head would be obscured and she might be choking on the milk. But surely it’s worth the loss of a few babies for the convenience of internet browsage.
Alternatively some kind of bottle holder that you attach to your chin would do the job. I googled “milk bottle chin holder” but amazingly no one has created one of these either (though the image search threw up some weird images, including a couple of Marilyn Monroe for some reason). Like most parents I manage to half-arsedly fulfil my fatherly duties by holding the bottle to my daughter’s face with my chin (and no holder), but some kind of pharaoh-like chin protuberance would facilitate this and give more freedom and less neck-ache. I would call it the Chinny Reckon or the Tutankha-moooon in honour of playground taunts of disbelief. Jimmy Hill could be in the adverts for it. Maybe the chin itself could be full of milk, thus cutting out the middle man. I really want to take this to Dragon’s Den. If anyone has the know-how to make a Chinny Reckon then get in touch and let’s see if we can get Banatyne to chuck some money in. And if you buy two Tutankha-mooons you get a free Baby-Head iPhone Holder. I genuinely can’t believe that this is an untapped market.
