Our new dad columnist Will Lodge charts the milestones in his and baby’s life.

Do you ever find that when a new piece of technology comes onto the market you cannot help but marvel at its ingenuity?

When the Dyson vacuum cleaner appeared and we all wondered why we had ever used bags to collect our dust, for example, or the ball barrow from the same inventor.

Well I have had a similar epiphany with baby kit.

Some of it is probably not new at all, but it is certainly new to me and just ingenious.

Perhaps the simplest is a tiny strip of plastic in the corner of baby milk cartons, which allows you to level off that scoop of formula with complete ease without resorting to finding a knife and sterilising it. It cannot be much bigger than the clip on a Biro lid but it is extremely efficient.

Nappies are another excellent example of household engineering at its finest. The super-absorbent pads, some sort of chemical to minimise the odours, stretchy waistbands – my simplistic word-orientated mind boggles.

However, while many of these inventions or evolutions are amazingly helpful, some are too complicated.

Take baby monitors. At their most basic they are nothing more than a more reliable walkie-talkie (and in many respects something less as you can only talk one way).

But have you ever tried to buy one? There are so many to choose from, from this most basic of settings (but at double the price of a walkie-talkie) to those with sensor pads which can detect if your baby stops breathing (and this costs considerably more).

Having sourced one of the extra super-duper ones for a very good price and second-hand online, we attempted to use the sensor pad only to find it went off pretty much constantly. And while Mila sleeps heavily, she doesn’t have a problem with breathing.

In fact, I’m fairly sure she was snoring the other day.

Another form of technology (in a loose sense of the word) I have trouble with is clothing.

Many baby-grows are cleverly designed with poppers in just the right places to make it easy to dress your babe with minimal effort. For those of you who are not parents, believe me when I say it is much harder than it looks to dress a baby – they wriggle A LOT.

But some of them are overly intricate to the point where I cannot work out, certainly not in my sleep-deprived state, which popper goes where and Mila either ends up in knots or not wearing anything.

Of course technology is constantly moving, evolving and adapting. Who knows, maybe I could make a contribution of my own in the future.

But while this old dog struggles with new tricks, I have no doubt it will not be long until Mila is more competent on a computer or tablet than I am.

I give it five years, tops.

Read more from Will Lodge here.