Every Drop

A calm breastfeeding, pumping, and feeding companion that helps parents understand their journey, because every drop counts.

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Inspiration

Every Drop began with a question I could not answer:

Is everything I am doing actually making a difference?

After my daughter Emma-Lyne was born, feeding became much more complicated than I had expected. Breastfeeding, pumping, bottles, medication, supplements, equipment changes, appointments, and conflicting advice all became part of the same journey.

Emma lost weight. She was diagnosed with a tongue-tie and underwent a release. I worked with lactation consultants, pediatricians, and physiotherapists. I pumped repeatedly, adjusted techniques, and searched constantly for evidence that something—anything—was improving.

Sometimes the difference was only five or ten millilitres.

On a spreadsheet, that could look insignificant. To me, it meant progress. It meant hope.

The apps I found could record feeds, diapers, sleep, and almost every other part of life with a newborn. But I did not need another busy baby tracker. I needed one calm place that could help me understand what was changing.

So, during maternity leave, I built one.

Every Drop did not begin as a startup idea. It began as a very simple browser tool I made for myself. It had no backend, no users, and no business model. I had no previous mobile-development experience.

I only knew that I had a real problem—and that I was willing to learn whatever I needed to solve it.

What it does

Every Drop is a calm breastfeeding, pumping, and feeding companion designed around one belief:

Parents need context, not more pressure.

It brings nursing, pumping, bottles, medication, and equipment information into one connected story. Parents can log quickly, understand how their journey is changing, and prepare clearer information for conversations with the professionals supporting them.

Every Drop Premium adds three ways to turn that history into something more useful:

  • Weekly Reflections transform recent activity into a gentle, personalised summary.
  • Your Whole Feeding Story preserves how the journey has evolved—not only what happened today.
  • Consultant Reports organise trends and context into a report that can be shared during an appointment.

The product does not define success as producing more milk or breastfeeding for longer. It does not use streaks, guilt, or comparison.

A parent may decide to continue breastfeeding, pump, combination feed, or stop. Every Drop exists to help them understand their experience and make that decision with greater clarity and confidence.

It is designed for someone who may be exhausted, holding a baby with one hand, and opening the app at three in the morning. That constraint shaped everything: the language, the navigation, the visual hierarchy, and what I deliberately chose not to build.

How I built it

I started with a standalone HTML prototype because it was the fastest way to test whether the idea was genuinely useful.

I used it myself. I found the confusing parts. I changed the language, removed unnecessary steps, and gradually expanded the product from a pumping tracker into a feeding decision-support companion.

Then I began turning it into a real mobile app.

I had to learn how native iOS projects are structured, how builds and signing work, how to distribute through TestFlight, how to preserve existing data, how subscriptions and entitlements work, and what Apple requires before an app can be submitted.

The product evolved through multiple TestFlight builds. I connected its backend and hosting infrastructure, added account management and deletion, created an iPhone-only configuration, built the Premium experience, and integrated RevenueCat for monthly and annual subscriptions, purchase restoration, and entitlement management.

The final submission process introduced another layer of work I had badly underestimated: privacy declarations, subscription metadata, review screenshots, localization, demo-account access, support and legal pages, review instructions, and repeated end-to-end testing.

What I initially imagined might be a short App Store setup became several more days of auditing, correcting, rebuilding, and learning.

AI helped me cross a technical barrier that would previously have stopped me from beginning. I used it to understand unfamiliar concepts, review decisions, debug problems, and work through the product from the perspectives of an engineer, designer, product leader, marketer, and App Store reviewer.

But AI did not decide what Every Drop should be.

The hardest questions remained human:

  • What information is genuinely helpful?
  • When does tracking become another source of anxiety?
  • How should the app respond to a changing feeding plan?
  • What should it deliberately leave out?
  • How can it support a parent without pretending to replace a healthcare professional?

AI accelerated the work. Lived experience, empathy, and judgment shaped the product.

Challenges I ran into

The hardest challenge was not building an individual feature.

It was turning a deeply emotional and highly personal experience into something structured, calm, and genuinely useful for someone else.

Feeding data can create clarity, but it can also create pressure. Every graph, notification, insight, and sentence had to pass the same test:

Will this help a tired parent feel more informed and confident—or will it give them one more reason to question themselves?

The technical journey was equally humbling.

I moved from a local browser prototype to a mobile iOS application while learning about Capacitor, Xcode, signing, build numbers, TestFlight, App Store requirements, server deployment, and subscription infrastructure as I went.

RevenueCat became one of the most important—and most instructive—parts of the build. I worked through products, offerings, paywalls, sandbox purchases, entitlements, and Restore Purchases until monthly and annual subscriptions reliably unlocked all three Premium features.

There were builds that appeared correct locally but showed old code in the simulator. There were Premium users who were still told Premium was required. There were purchase errors, stale assets, missing settings links, localization gaps, and flows that worked for me but not for a tester.

Each fix revealed another part of mobile development I had not known existed.

I also had to learn that shipping is not one final action. It is a chain of small, connected systems. The app, backend, subscription configuration, legal pages, App Store metadata, and review account all have to tell the same story and work together.

Accomplishments that I’m proud of

I am proud that Every Drop grew from a tool I created for myself into a real iOS product that other parents can install and use.

During Shipaton, I:

  • Turned a lived problem into a focused product with a clear philosophy.
  • Took a standalone browser prototype through multiple native iOS builds.
  • Built and tested monthly and annual RevenueCat subscriptions.
  • Made purchases and Restore Purchases unlock Weekly Reflections, the Whole Feeding Story, and Consultant Reports.
  • Preserved historical feeding data as the product evolved.
  • Built a downloadable, consultant-ready PDF report.
  • Created a complete English, Spanish, and French Premium experience.
  • Added account deletion, legal pages, support resources, and an App Review demo flow.
  • Recruited testers and used their feedback to uncover problems I could not reproduce alone.
  • Completed a detailed pre-submission audit from the perspective of an Apple reviewer.
  • Submitted my first mobile app to App Store Connect.

None of these steps felt dramatic while I was completing them. Most looked like one small fix, one new concept, or one more build.

Together, they became a product.

That feels particularly fitting for something called Every Drop.

What I learned

I learned that reading can give me knowledge, but building gives me understanding.

Before Every Drop, terms such as entitlements, provisioning, sandbox purchases, and restore flows were concepts I could learn about from a distance. Building the app showed me why they matter, where they fail, and how every technical decision eventually becomes part of someone’s experience.

I learned that a feature is not finished when it works on my computer. It has to survive real devices, real accounts, stale builds, network requests, purchase states, reinstalls, and people who do not know how the product is supposed to behave.

I learned that emotional safety is part of product quality. Information can be technically accurate and still make someone feel judged, compared, or inadequate. Building for parents means considering not only whether a feature functions, but what it asks from someone emotionally.

I also learned what AI can—and cannot—change.

AI made it possible for me to begin without waiting until I had the “right” technical background. It helped me move faster and close gaps in my knowledge. But it did not eliminate uncertainty, judgment, or responsibility.

I still had to choose the problem, question the output, test the product, recognise when something felt wrong, and keep going when I did not yet understand the next step.

The most important lesson was that resourcefulness is not pretending to know everything.

It is being honest about what you do not know and trusting yourself to learn what you need next.

What’s next for Every Drop

The immediate next step is to continue working with testers and prepare Every Drop for its first public App Store release.

From there, I want to deepen the parts of the product that help parents move from recording information to understanding it:

  • More useful and carefully bounded reflections.
  • Stronger appointment-preparation tools.
  • Better ways to preserve and communicate the full feeding story.
  • Continued improvements to accessibility, localization, and one-handed use.
  • Thoughtful expansion to additional platforms when the core experience is ready.

I do not want Every Drop to become another all-in-one parenting app.

Its future depends on remaining focused: helping someone understand what is happening, communicate it clearly, and make their next decision with confidence.

Every Drop began with a few millilitres of milk and a question I could not answer.

Building it has taught me mobile development from the inside. More importantly, it has shown me that a deeply personal problem can become something useful for another person—without losing the care that made it worth solving in the first place.

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