Motherhood can turn you into a sleep deprived mombie. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg put his skills to work on a device that helps his wife get more sleep and you’re going to want one too.
Zuckerberg noticed that his wife Priscilla Chan, mom of their two daughters, Maxima “Max,” three, and August, one and a half, would wake up often in the middle of the night anxious that the kids were about to wake up. “Being a mom is hard, and since we’ve had kids Priscilla has had a hard time sleeping through the night,” Zuckerberg wrote of his invention. “She’ll wake up and check the time on her phone to see if the kids might wake up soon, but then knowing the time stresses her out and she can’t fall back asleep.”
To remedy the problem Zuckerberg created a device called the Sleep Box that resembles a wooden box. Between the hours of 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. the box emits a faint light that lets her know that it’s a decent hour for the kids to be awake. The light is dim enough that she can fall back asleep if she gets lucky and the kids are sleeping in. In the middle of the night if she wakes too early one brief glance at the box is enough to tell her she can roll over and go back to sleep.
Zuckerberg shared his new invention in a Facebook post which quickly racked up likes and comments, especially from moms. Some were quick to point out that the Sleep Box is like the mom version of the wake clock designed to keep kids from getting out of bed too early.
For moms hoping to get one of their own, there is some hope that they could eventually hit stores. “As an engineer, building a device to help my partner sleep better is one of the best ways I can think of to express my love and gratitude,” he wrote. “A bunch of my friends have told me they’d want something like this, so I’m putting this out there in case another entrepreneur wants to run with this and build sleep boxes for more people!”
—Shahrzad Warkentin
Featured photo: StockSnap via Pixabay
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