BreathableBaby Mesh Crib Bumpers

For more than ten years, parenting experts, child product safety organizations, and new parents have been talking about the potential safety hazards of using traditional crib bumpers inside infants’ cribs despite the benefits of preventing head, arm and leg injuries.

We are Dale and Susan Waters, married entrepreneurs from Minnesota who turned fear for our baby’s safety inside her crib into a mission to create something that would not only help protect babies but also provide peace of mind for parents. We invented the Breathable Mesh Crib Bumper; a product designed to reduce the risks of suffocation caused by traditional bumpers, while protecting a baby’s limbs from becoming entrapped in the crib slats.

BreathableBaby is Born

12 years ago, we woke to the sound of our 3-month-old daughter screaming in agony from her crib. Our daughter, Sierra had gotten her legs twisted and wedged between the slats of her crib. Her face was pinned against the mattress.

There were many sleepless nights for us and our daughter – no matter what we tried she kept getting her little arms and legs caught between the crib slats. In addition to the obvious pain of being stuck, we feared she would break an arm or leg, or develop neuropathy. But we refused to use a soft, pillowy crib bumper for fear of suffocation.

Research shows that a baby can snuggle up right against their crib bumper. If the baby’s nose and mouth are too close to the bumper, it can potentially cause dangerous re-breathing of carbon dioxide or suffocation. A baby can also get wedged between crib slats and the mattress, unable to escape and possibly suffocate. Because the safety and potential dangers of crib bumpers has been in the news recently, many parents are unsure about how to keep their babies comfortable and safe.

As parents, we were frustrated and upset to learn there was no practical solution available in the marketplace. As designers and entrepreneurs we decided we had to do something about it and devoted ourselves to developing a safer, “breathable” solution – preferably one that was affordable and easy to use. So, we took a break from the media, marketing and music company we owned, and focused on creating a safer solution for babies.

We researched and sourced fabrics, designed and engineered prototypes, held focus groups with mothers and sought extensive third party safety evaluations by a world-leader in safety consultation before finally introducing a safer, smarter crib bumper to the market three years later in 2002.

What makes BreathableBaby bumpers so much safer is our Air Channel Technology™ (A.C.T.) designed to prevent suffocation. A.C.T. maintains air access should a baby’s mouth and nose press up against the fabric. When the BreathableBaby fabric is compressed it is virtually impossible to form an airtight seal. In fact BreathableBaby has “fabric cards” available so that parents can experience the A.C.T. safety feature for themselves — just send in a request along with your address information to customercare@BreathableBaby.com and we’ll send you one free of charge.

Since its launch, we’re proud to say that the BreathableBaby™ brand has forged a new category in “breathable” bedding, and is embraced by parents worldwide. Our products have won numerous awards including The Child Safety House Calls Award of Excellence, and National Parenting Center Seal of Approval for innovation, functionality, design and contribution to creating a safer, healthier crib environment.

It’s imperative that parents are aware of the potential dangers that may be part of a baby’s sleep environment. New information is available all the time, so we urge all expectant parents – first time or otherwise – to seek relevant news, alerts, studies and guidelines from news and safety organizations such as the ones listed in our Healthful Hints below.

Wishing you and your little one sweet dreams.

HEALTHFUL HINTS:

Six Steps to a Safe Sleep Environment For Your Baby

1. Crib Mattress Should be Firm. A soft mattress may increase suffocation risks. Select a firm mattress that fits the crib tightly and a fitted sheet. You should have a fitted not be able to fit more than two fingers between the mattress and the crib side. Before purchasing a crib, visit www.cpsc.gov to make sure the crib you selected has not been recalled.
2. No Blankets for Baby. Do not place anything in baby’s crib that could be a suffocation hazard, including blankets. If you’re worried about keeping your baby warm, a better solution is an infant sleeper or wearable blanket that zips around your baby and can’t ride up over her face.
3. Breathable Mesh Crib Bumpers. Crib bumpers that are plush, pillowy, and made of non-breathable fabric can increase the risk of suffocation. A safer crib bumper option is one that is mesh or breathable and allows for air flow – even when pressed against a baby’s mouth.
4. De-Clutter the Crib. For most parents, all those cute stuffed animals and soft blankets might seem a natural fit for the crib, but unfortunately they all pose suffocation risks. Toys and stuffed animals are best saved for interactive play time.
5. A bottle. Parents of older infants who have started holding their own bottles may be tempted to slip a bottle into the crib in case their baby wakes at night. But even a bottle can pose a suffocation risk. Plus, babies who fall asleep with a bottle in their mouths are prone to tooth decay from the milk sugars that sit on their teeth all night.
6. Pacifiers. Some studies have shown that giving your baby a clean, dry pacifier reduces SIDS rates.

Resources For More Information On Safe Sleep and Crib Safety

• Consumer Product Safety Commission www.cpsc.gov/info/cribs
• Keeping Babies Safe www.keepingbabiessafe.org
• American Academy of Pediatrics www.healthychildren.org
• First Candle www.firstcandle.org
• Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association http://cribsafety.jpma.org

Speedbump

Hi, my name is Jon Fischer. I have always had an interest in technology and was the Massachusetts Middle School Robotics Champion 3 years in a row. I wanted to enter the Massachusetts State Science Fair in 2006 (my Junior year of high school), but wasn’t sure what I could do for an original technology project.

Then one of my older friends crashed his car speeding on a back road, severely injuring him and 2 others. After his recovery, the driver told me he knew he was driving much too fast for that road but never thought he would actually crash. I had seen similar stories in the local papers and continued to learn more about the issue in drivers ed. I noticed a recurring theme with teen driver accidents: they almost always seemed to happen on back roads. I decided to do some research and proved my theory, speeding on non-highway roads (local or back roads and secondary roads) is statistically much more dangerous than on highways. I realized that this was a big problem and set out to solve it for my science fair project.

My first step in the project was to research what products already existed for teen safe driving. I found a few products out there, but they were all “constant tracking solutions” to continuously track your teen, which have a number of issues. First, parents would have to dig through mountains of data to find if their teen was ever speeding. Second, this approach is just too invasive for teens. I knew I could build a better solution for both parents and teens!

By the end of the science fair, I had developed a hardware prototype running my own custom software that allowed monitoring of speeding by road class. Although very rudimentary and by no means a useable product, my prototype worked. It was able to be mounted into a car and detect the type of road being driven on with GPS, and then determine if the car was traveling at an appropriate speed for the road. If the car was speeding, the prototype would save the location and speed data which could be viewed on a computer. But if the driver was being safe on the road, the prototype wouldn’t log any kind of data about the driver.

I got an honorable mention in the science fair and was happy with the prototype I had made. Following the science fair presentation, my dad (who was running a small business he had started several years earlier) suggested trying to commercialize my prototype into a real product. I then wrote a business plan over the summer and entered the Mount Wachusett Community College Business Plan Competition in the fall. To my surprise, I won! And took home almost $20,000 to start my business.

I used some of this money to file a patent on “the ability to monitor speed by road class” and used the rest to incorporate the business. Because of this business plan competition win, I was also able to get several entrepreneurial scholarships for college and attended Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. I chose Champlain because of their BYOBiz (Bring Your Own Business) program. BYOBiz is an extracurricular program at Champlain that provides student entrepreneurs with resources to build their business; primarily mentorship and a shared office space on campus.

It took another 2 years, and a partnership with a hardware manufacturer before release of my first version of the product, Speed-Demon, a commercialized version of the hardware I developed in the science fair. Unfortunately I was only able to sell 52 in a year’s time. Every parent that bought one said they loved the product and saw a vast improvement in their teen’s driving while using the product. However, I received a lot of feedback from parents who could not afford the $250 dollar upfront cost of the box, plus a $15 dollar a month subscription to the service.

I could not bring the cost of the hardware down any further and now, for the first time, thought the business might not make it. One night while playing with my friend’s new Android phone, I realized that times had changed; I no longer needed to sell hardware! Smart phones now had all the technology I needed to provide the same teen safe driving service but without selling my own hardware!

I immediately started researching platforms and found Android OS to be the best for the first version of Speedbump – The Teen Driving Safety App.

The app launched on Android phones at the beginning of summer 2011 (just as I graduated from college) and the iPhone version of Speedbump will be available in early 2012. Speedbump now has more users than Speed-Demon ever did, in less than a quarter of the time! Parents have continued to tell me how much they love Speedbump for its ability to make their teens safer drivers. As an added bonus, they also mention that their teens have become safer passengers, often telling their friends to slow down because of Speedbump reporting. Speedbump is bringing parents and teens together to encourage driving safety and I couldn’t be happier. I’d like to offer any readers of this article a Free 1 Month Trial by using the promo code “PSafety” to sign up at www.SpeedbumpGPS.com. In addition, it would be great to hear any comments or suggestions you may have for me! Please reach out to me on Twitter @SpeedbumpGPS or on Facebook: Speedbump.

HEALTHFUL HINTS

1. Safe driving is green driving. By following the posted speed limits, you can save a lot at the pump!
2. Help your teen drive safely:
   • Know the facts/risks – and talk to your child EARLY. Car crashes are the number one killer of teens in the United States – more than cancer, homicide and suicide combined. And risk begins to increase as young as age 12 – because young teens are also at risk as passengers of cars driven by older teen drivers (AAA gives a good overview).
   • Use a parent-teen driving contract (click here for example).
   • Always remind your teens to wear their seatbelts.
3. Set a good example for your teens with your own driving! According to AAA, good driving habits include:
   • Always wear your safety belt.
   • Obey traffic laws.
   • Do not use a cell phone while driving.
   • Watch your speed.
   • Don’t tailgate.
   • Use your turn signals.
   • Don’t drive when angry or tired.

Buzzy

As a pediatrician, I strongly support vaccination. I never thought shots were a big deal; parents and staff even chuckle sometimes when a kid is freaking out about shots. You know, ‘deal with it’. I have taken care of children who died from vaccine-preventable diseases, and I used to think that any delay in shots endangers all society. Then I had my own kids, and witnessed firsthand that while vaccines don’t hurt children, shots do. Like most of the 22% of adults who fear needles, my son Max developed a phobia after a horrible shot experience at age 4. This fear affected him every time he had to go to the doctor. I gradually realized that if I didn’t act he could go through adulthood avoiding medical care.

It makes sense that being held down and subjected to more than five shots at a time could have a lifelong impact on complying with health care. When I tried to use numbing creams, one nurse said “that stuff doesn’t work, they need to get used to it”, and gave the shot outside the numb zone! I got mad at the system and myself.  If I couldn’t protect my child and I’m part of the system, what parent could? I wanted to come up with something that worked instantly that parents and patients with established needle phobia could bring and use even if the healthcare system wasn’t interested.

I knew that the body could stop pain naturally using something called “gate theory”. If you bang your knee and rub it the pain stops, if you smash your finger and shake it, it helps the pain, or if you burn your finger and stick it under cold running water it quits hurting. I thought of cuffs of cold water, all sorts of messy stuff. Driving home from the hospital one day it occurred to me that vibration would block pain, but it wasn’t until my husband suggested frozen peas UNDER the vibration that it really made my kids’ hands numb to sharp pokes. And Buzzy was conceived.

Buzzy® uses natural pain relief by confusing your body’s own nerves and distracting attention away from the poke, thereby dulling or eliminating sharp pain. Over the past 5 years my children helped test, build, and prototype Buzzy until we had a device that worked. They smashed cell phones, helped me use electric tape and elastic bands, and have served as my first and best advisors. We started with a hand held massager and frozen peas, and finally got to a cute bee with frozen wings.

From a scientific standpoint, I didn’t want to put it out there unless I knew it worked for other people as well as my kids. The Mayday Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to the reduction of pain and suffering, sponsored Georgia State to do a research study in adult volunteers getting IVs inserted.  Buzzy significantly decreased pain, and was more effective the more anxiety people already had. A trial in children needing IV starts in the emergency department also showed significantly decreased pain by child and parent report, and even increased IV success threefold. On the basis of this, we got a $1M grant from the National Institutes of Health to study whether Buzzy reduces the pain of immunizations, and hopefully can avoid the development of needle phobia.

How important is this?? Although needle pain from a shot may not seem like a big deal, needle sticks are the most common and most feared cause of medical pain in the world. Blood donation, preventative health care, and diagnosing serious illnesses like cancer are all impacted by fearing doctors and needles. Conversely, awareness and use of available pain control methods for children can result in years of improved health.  Buzzy® is now being used for dentistry, travel immunizations, fertility shots, and finger pricks, splinter removal, and flu injections! We’ve heard from parents who had considered stopping more effective injected or IV treatments due to needle fear who are now able to give their kids the best treatment due to Buzzy. We’ve even heard from kids… stories and letters that remind us that Needle Pain Matters…and because of that, so does Buzzy.

HEALTHFUL HINTS:

Before a shot:

My area of research is pain control, so I hear a lot of stories about drama at the doctor’s. For young children, pain is punishment and scary, so addressing fear is an important first step to making shots less of a big deal. Children are less fearful when they know what’s happening and feel in control. Sadly, there are no global answers, but there are some general tricks of the trade you can try.

• When asked “am I going to get a shot?” focus on the benefit. “Yes, they have medicine that keeps you healthy.”
• NEVER promise they won’t get a shot unless you intend to follow through and come back another time if they’re due for one
• NEVER threaten with a shot if children don’t behave (establishing a needle as punishment or you as untrustworthy will guarantee a bad experience).
• If the child’s question is, “Is it going to hurt?”, avoid using the words pain or hurt. Instead, use the word “bother”, and answer this way: “Actually, a lot of kids aren’t that bothered by shots. Before you get them, I’ll show you how we will make getting them not a big deal.”
• If they’ve had a bad experience in the past, say “I found out about some new cool things we can do to make them much more comfortable.”

And now – the shot:

• First, relieving kids’ distress begins with you. The best combination is warm but firm. No apologizing, empathizing, or letting them “just go to the bathroom real quick.” Instead, use praise, “I know you can do this”, and direct them to pay attention to non-shot related things before they get anxious. “Oh, look, SpongeBob.”
• Second, the person giving the shots. These are research-proven things that make shots hurt less:
  • Give the least painful shot first
  • Give the shots sitting up in the arm after age 18 months
  • Use a slower push
  • Use a longer needle
  • Use “position of comfort”: facing you on your lap, or with your arm around the child if they are older and receiving shots sitting up. Being held flat is the most vulnerable positing you can be in; much better if 4-6 year olds can straddle your lap facing you and get shots while you hug them.
• Third, to help overcome established needle-phobia:
  • There are creams (over the counter LMX-4, Ferndale Labs) which can be applied 20 minutes in advance, or prescription EMLA (Astra-Zeneca) which needs at least an hour. Be sure they’re placed correctly, and know that they only numb the surface. Never promise complete pain relief. Instead, try “these will help a LOT!”
  • Studies show that appropriate distraction decreases distress. While the nurse is getting the injections, let a child choose from multiple visual games or tasks to focus elsewhere during the shot. “Do you want me to read to you, or give you things to find?” Be prepared to pick if they’re indecisive. “You know what I think would be good? Let’s do this…”  Bee-Stractors Emergency Entertainment cards can be kept in a purse or glove compartment for situations when you forget to plan ahead.
  • Tasks that include a sensation also help focus attention away from the poke: for example, tell your child to count zigzags as you scratch the edge of a fingernail on their arm. Tell the child to yell “now!” when a fingernail gets to the elbow or wrist. For multiple shots or a seriously anxious child, bring an ice pack or vibrating toy to touch other body parts and have the child name the body part touched by ice. “Knee! Leg! Nose!” Even better, touch them with an ice pop and 5 right answers wins the pop!
  • And speaking of ice packs, studies have shown that putting an ice cube on the site before a shot can decrease the pain. Adding an element of vibration during the poke can help as well, like when a dentist wiggles your lip during Novocaine. This is the breakthrough of Buzzy, but you can achieve the same results with any vibration/solid ice pack combination. For best results, let the child feel the sensations beforehand by scratching the arm under the ice pack/vibration source. “See how cold this is, and see how now you can’t feel so much any more?” Seeing for themselves and agreeing with you helps the child feel in control.

Whatever happens, praise how they did!

Nourish

Hi, I’m Lara Hodgson, and until about a year ago I was a mother with a problem in search of a plan. My solution was Nourish – the first formula-ready bottle for babies and spill-proof bottled water for toddlers. Here’s how I got there…

Becoming a new mom did not mean that my on-the-go life stopped. In fact, these days it is not just working moms who spend the majority of their day outside of the home. But I am a working mom and the baby and I were out and about most of the day. Feeding a baby on the go can be stressful when you’re holding a hungry infant, measuring formula, adding water and mixing a bottle – all while trying to keep the bottle and nipple clean. When my son was hungry it was immediate and it was loud! Equally challenging was the end of the day, when I was faced with the dilemma of how to clean dirty baby bottles in hotel or public sinks. When my son outgrew bottles and formula, I struggled to find a way to hydrate him on the go without all the sugar and the spills. We had daily spills in the car, and at the park when my thirsty and independent toddler (whose favorite word was “MINE!”) decided that his little hands could hold anything – right then. Taking a toddler or preschooler out of the house and maintaining or building healthy habits is a challenge. The only solutions for a thirsty youngster are full of sugar – juice boxes, drink pouches – yuck! This just compounded my stress. Sure I tried to pack my sippy cups but they quickly got dirty or lost (or emptied by TSA) and I often had to grab something on the go. I created Nourish for these very moments.

Nourish Baby is a patented, formula-ready baby bottle complete with 8 oz. of purified spring water, volume markings and a baby nipple top that gives on-the-go parents the comfort of knowing that they have immediate access to pre-measured, purified spring water in a clean BPA-free, Phthalate-free bottle that is 100% Made in the USA, recyclable and reusable. Just add formula, shake and serve.

Nourish Toddler is a patented, spill-proof, BPA-free, Phthalate-free bottled water with a sippy top that allows toddlers to enjoy their independence without the messiness of sticky, sugary beverages or adult-sized bottled waters.

Research and Testing

We began our testing by meeting with moms to determine the nature of their challenges related to health and convenience of beverages while on the go. We continue to listen to our customers daily via social media and direct contact (which we welcome – I even give out my direct number and will personally call any customer who reaches out to me). Our customers have not only given us great feedback and helped us improve our product, but they continue to challenge us to think bigger. It is at their request that we launched the Nourish Relief Program and have sent over 5000 bottles to children in Haiti. We are expanding that program now to help victims in Alabama and in Japan. We also just launched Team Nourish – a group of passionate customers (mostly moms) who now help us get Nourish into stores and direct to customers.

Of course in addition to market testing we did a great deal of research and safety testing on plastics (hence our BPA Free and Phthalate Free product), on usability (we created a unique design for our bottle so that even little hands can easily hold) and on environment (so that we could bring amazingly pure water in bottles that are recyclable and reusable to our customers). We also worked with pediatricians and dentists to understand how water can help establish healthy habits that will prevent childhood obesity, juvenile diabetes and dehydration dangers.

Also, Nourish is 100% Made in the USA so we can have strong quality controls and provide local jobs. In the beginning, I actually didn’t intend to make a special baby nipple or sippy. I thought I could just buy those but they are all made outside the US and I couldn’t sleep at night so Nourish baby nipples and sippy tops are made by a medical molding company in GA. And what a blessing – we were able to design a sippy top that truly does not leak at all, even if you stand on it! We use third party testing labs to test all of our components and our assembled product and our water source does daily, weekly, monthly and annual testing with 3rd party labs and date stamps all of our bottles so we can monitor quality

Water Source??

Okay, so we don’t actually make the water. While there isn’t much a mom can’t do, we didn’t exactly make the contents of our containers. What we did do is search high, low and everywhere in between to source the very best water and what we found was English Mountain Spring Water

At Nourish we exist to “nourish” our most precious resources: our children, our time, our health and our world – I know you take that seriously and I do too!

HEALTHFUL HINTS

Tips on healthy drinking

• Did you know that over 20% of your daily calories come from what you drink? If you replace one children’s sugary drink with a Nourish water every day, you will save your child almost 50,000 calories every year!
• You can always dress up your water or Nourish with fresh fruit such as strawberries, blackberries or blueberries to add a little flavor and fun without the chemicals and sugar!

Tips on traveling with young kids

• Dress your child in bright colors (shirts and hats) wherever you go so they will always stand out in a crowd.
• If you are traveling in an airplane, be sure that your child is sucking on something during takeoff and landing to keep their ears unclogged.

NannyTest

My name is Yossi Pinkas and I am the founder of TakeCare.  NannyTest, TakeCare’s online personality and risk assessment tool, helps parents choose the best nanny, au pair or babysitter for their kids by providing better insight into a caregiver’s personality traits and potential risk factors.

How did I come up with NannyTest? My previous position was with a company that developed tools for investigations, truth validation and pre-employment integrity checks. During the three years I was working with the company, I became familiar with this world and the various tools and methods used extensively by both government organizations and corporations to screen employees, including personality tests. When my wife returned to work after my youngest son (now 2.5 years old) was born, we were looking for a nanny and it was then that I realized how useful such a test could be for parents.

Parents today already know they should interview applicants and check references. Some also perform background checks. Yet, all those screening measures have their limitations.

• Interviews often fail to reveal important facts or problematic personality traits, and their predictive value is limited, even when conducted by properly trained interviewers. Most parents are not trained interviewers and are usually lacking the necessary experience to properly formulate interview questions, read between the lines of what the applicant says, interpret non-verbal signs and body language, etc.
• Reference checks are highly subjective and in some cases past employers may even prefer, for various reasons, to omit certain details which may harm the candidate in his search for a new position.
• The quality of background checks varies and may be affected by the scope and accuracy of the databases used. Furthermore, a clean criminal record does not guarantee that a person has no criminal tendencies and there is always a first time for every offence.

Personality tests help overcome some of the limitations of existing screening measures. They allow parents to learn more about the nanny’s personality and traits and highlight possible risk factors.

Looking for a suitable test, I found that all available tests were targeted at large customers and parents just couldn’t gain access to them. Also, none were designed for screening caregivers. This led me to found TakeCare and launch a service that would answer this need.

NannyTest was created for TakeCare by Psiphas Psychological Applications, which has been supplying computerized psychological tests for over 20 years to government organizations, placement agencies and corporate customers such as FedEx and IKEA. It uses the CPI (California Psychological Inventory) as the basis for its personality assessment. (CPI has been used in the US for many years and has been validated by many researchers in various studies).

Still, although it is based on a well-accepted standard, in several ways NannyTest is unique:

• It is designed to be simple to use and the report is easy to understand – no professional background in Psychology or hiring is required, allowing the test to be used by parents themselves.
• For the sake of simplicity, it combines both personal traits suitability and risk assessment into a single test, rather than two separate tests.
• Being available on line means that any parent can use NannyTest, anytime and anywhere.
• Finally, and most important – traits assessed are specific to the role of a caregiver.
  • Risk assessment includes issues such as violent behavior, drug abuse, drinking habits, truthful reporting, theft and more.
  • Personality traits evaluated are responsibility, obedience and discipline, self-control, coping with pressure, service awareness and positive attitude.

It’s important to note that personality tests will never be 100% accurate and have their limitations. That is why combining several screening methods together improves the overall accuracy of the process and helps parents make an informed choice, selecting the best possible caregiver for their kids.

NannyTest was launched only several months ago but has already received excellent feedback from both experts and parents. We still have a long way to go but we hope that one day NannyTest, or similar personality tests, will become a standard component of the caregiver screening processes and be used by all parents.

HEALTHFUL HINTS:

When hiring someone to look after your child, know that:

• No single screening tool is 100% accurate. Parents should combine several screening tools together to gather as much information as possible before making a hiring decision.
• When screening a caregiver for your child combine interviews, reference checks, personality tests and background screening.
• Never ignore your intuition. If something feels wrong to you, move to the next applicant.