Baby-Therm

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.

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20 thoughts on “Baby-Therm

  1. Jo my man, you could make it out of that material that changes colors with different temperatures, that way the whole article of clothing is the correct color when the baby is the right temp.

  2. I keep picturing the red pop up button on a turkey as part of the design for Jer’s Baby-therm.

    “Oh look ma…baby’s done!”

  3. Hm… musical Baby-Therm. That would be interesting; “Babe, your as cold as ice…”

    Or we could put a chip in each article of clothing that sends a text message to the parent. Then when the competitors come out with the same thing we could come out with the “No RF” version and leverage the FUD about cell phones and brain cancer.

    Or if we could hook up with some of that iPhone marketing magic, we be golden!

  4. yet he is not crushed
    beneath all that he must bear
    the weight of genius

    but it has to play “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, it just wouldn’t feel right otherwise…

  5. And price it high. Maybe get a land’s end or an eddie baur tag on it. The marketing juggernaut against parents ran over Americans long ago and there’s nothing but money to be made here.

    Now, if you could just invent the Baby poop-o-gone magic-evapo-disapperolator you could print your own money.

  6. A baby therm? IS that like a british thermal unit?
    How many babies equals one baby therm? and is it the same number you squeeze for a unit of baby oil?

  7. I think our invention would be you and me drinking beer while watching John clean. I am recalling a certain cat in Seattle and recent cases of Jesse the wonder dog eating grass. I think John could be passed out drunk, but if some bio organism made a poopy mess, he’d awake and clean it up.

  8. The thing about human baby poop – in my experience, which is one data point out of a zillion parents (and other parents on the board can chime in here); and regarding the Baby poop-o-gone magic-evapo-disapperolator – is that it isn’t the dealing with your baby’s poop that is the problem, but rather the environs: the how-to-change-discreetly in the back of a car, or in a grocery store bathroom; the what-to-do-with-ye-olde-used-diaper.
    (Success! I managed to use dashes, semi-colons, colons, and parantheses in that first sentence. I rule. That first sentence is as dirty as a diaper. Editors beware…)
    It’s amazing how many diaper tables you see in mens’ bathrooms; thinking all the while, “What a grand, enlightened, egalitarian world we live in!”; until you actually become a father, and suddenly find it was all in your imagination. I have found the occassional table: last one was in an airport bathroom, and blocked 50% of the urinals when folded down (many startled and non-plussed looks from hurried men in business attire). The genius of the Baby poop-o-gone magic-evapo-disapperolator will be that it can discreetly change and dispose of poop in a crowded five star restaurant on top of the pyramid Giza.

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