I’m at the Budvar Bar Near Home, and the TV news is on. We’ve had a storm coming through, and with it inconvenience. I was just watching footage of a crew wading through snow to clear a rather small fallen tree off the tracks while a train waited. They cut the tree into bite-sized morsels and tossed them to the side.
If only there had been something nearby with the ability to pull with great force. They could have cleared the tree in a fraction of the time.
It’s been downright chilly here the past couple of days. I know when I hear the heater going in the morning despite the thermostat being set on the lower nighttime temperature, that winter is here. I was out and about yesterday and I saw a woman carrying an infant. Is that baby warm enough? I asked myself. It didn’t seem to me that the kid was bundled up enough.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The amount the baby is bundled up is more based on how cold the mother is, not the comfort of the baby itself. The kid has no way of saying, “Geeze, mom, I’m boiling in here!” If the baby cries, it’s just as likely — perhaps more likely — to be rewarded with a bundleage adjustment in the wrong direction.
Fortunately, I’m here with a solution. You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.
What is needed is a way to know what the skin temperature of the baby is. A little research should easily yield a comfort zone for healthy, happy babies. Then all that’s needed is a way for the parent to know what the skin temperature of their kid is. Introducing Baby-Therm clothing for infants. Each shirt has a small temperature sensor over the belly button and perhaps at the back of the neck, and each pair of pants measures temperatures at the thigh. The socks and little mittens each have sensors as well, although for extremities the range of allowable temperatures would be much broader.
The flagship article is of course the Baby-Therm hat, which not only measures scalp temperature, but also has a set of LED’s showing the temperature status of the baby’s various parts. Green, all is well. Red, too hot. Blue, too cold. With no guesswork at all, the baby is cozy and warm, without being overbaked. Plus, you can use the kid as a Christmas ornament!
There are a couple of details to work out, like how best to connect the sensors to the hat, but nothing insurmountable. And think of the market: nervous first-time parents would flock to the Baby-Therm store, ready to plunk down some serious cash if at least one bit of parental guesswork is reduced. I don’t have to tell most of you that people now expect baby products to be very expensive.
Then, of course, there’s Baby-Therm deluxe, which uses little heater elements to automatically keep the kid at the ideal temperature. Oh, yeah.
