When new mum Elysia Krstevski was unable to give her baby girl milk, she realised there was a gap in the baby market and a parenting product that didn’t yet exist.

The now mum-of-two, 34, from Melbourne, had just had her first baby, Armani, and Melbourne was in the midst of its first strict COVID lockdown when Elysia decided to accompany her husband Chris on an “essential grocery trip” for some time out of the house.

“I was very much in the early days of feeding and didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d just been struck with mastitis,” Elysia recalls to 7Life.

“When we got to the supermarket, Armani started screaming from hunger. But you weren’t allowed to touch anything. I couldn’t get hot water to heat her bottle up from anywhere.”

Desperately trying to fix the situation, Elysia said she attempted to breastfeed Armani, but “nothing came out”.

“We couldn’t get any hot water. She was screaming and screaming, it was a disaster,” Elysia says.

The situation was made even more traumatic by the fact that Elysia and her husband Chris were usually over-prepared, and so they were horrified to find themselves in a situation that they couldn’t sort out.

“That night when I got home, I thought to myself, I can’t leave the house like this again,” Elysia says. “I needed a way to heat up milk on demand.”

So named after her husband and the Macedonian word for milk, Mekė Baby’s Baby Milk Warmer is unlike anything else in the crowded baby market insofar as it’s an original state-of-the art portable milk warmer designed for use with infant formula or breastmilk.

With the $185 product, there is no need to search for a nearby café or hot water supply as you can quickly warm your milk within minutes - all with the help of the one single gadget.

“Its advanced heat-up technology ensures that essential nutrients and antibodies are not compromised during feeding,” Elysia explains.

“The dedicated temperature control processor ensures that liquids are heated slowly and precisely, while monitoring fluctuations to maintain the set temperature.

“This means you won’t get those hot spots you get in a microwave.”

Liquids in it are heated slowly and precisely. Credit: Supplied

Setting up Mekė and creating the Mekė Milk Baby Milk Warmer was in no way easy.

Elysia says she had to do “lots of testing” to ensure that the product meets Australian, New Zealand and UK standards.

“It was important to me to make something that was food-grade and that ensures the protection of the vital nutrients and antibodies present in milk, even while being heated”, Elysia says.

“By the time we launched, friends and family loved the idea. Finally, a solution for every mum, dad, grandma or grandad! We had a lot of ‘how has this not been done before?’”