Lazy Dad activity pays off!

An article by Chelle    No Comments

For the launch of our dads page we joined up with SnuggleBundl who have agreed to guest blog for us. Mike and Dave will both be blogging for us over the coming months…so here goes enjoy….

Like most men we don’t like to struggle (I site man flu as a good example of that!). Why do you think we invent all these large tools? Laziness and a wish to do nothing, or even less, is the prerequisite to all invention. As a student in industrial design my need to solve problems and make life easier lead me to two UK patents. This inventiveness didn’t change when I became a Dad for the first time. As a young father I noticed that I kept on finding ways to get away from doing so much. Having observed my partner spending hours entertaining our daughter whilst I marked pupils’ work, I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. When it came round to my time with our princess I had already laid plans to apply clever methods designed to give me a little extra space after I had already exhausted myself doing the embarrassing dad entertainment.

A few days earlier I had noticed that she loved watching the dryer go around. So I put her bouncer chair in front of the dryer and she loved it! I got time to plan another lesson whilst she remained transfixed. Half hour later she wanted more daddy time so I swung her round and did other crazy daddy stuff like facial contortions and producing weird noises. Then, my next trick came from noticing how much she loved to look out of the window and look at cars. We lived on the edge of a ‘T’ Junction. I put her in the pram and laid a few blankets over her, opened the front door and placed her in a good position to watch the cars go by. She was as happy as can be and I kept a close eye on her whilst quickly checking my lesson plans.

One invention from a fellow dad really impressed me. There isn’t much worse than being kept awake all night and, within the modern dad capacity, trying to keep up with an incessant list of household task whilst keeping up with a baby that endlessly cries due to not wanting to go to sleep! Having stooped low to lay your sleepy baby, your back is killing you from hours of marching up and down, you wait to see if they are asleep, even snoring, and then you move that last inch of your arm from under their head and they wake with an almighty scream! The process seems to get stuck on repeat, up, down, up and down like an endurance test! And it seems to go on longer than a game of Monopoly– only in this case you’d swap anything for a card that sent you to jail– just for the break!!!

This sort of experience is exactly what spurred on the David Solomons to invent a solution to all this. Knowing I had experience with patents we got talking and he showed me an answer to lifting and laying baby without waking him/her. My wife and I loved it and joined forces to produce and bring to market the Snugglebundl baby blanket. It’s simplicity is probably what makes it so impressive, after all it’s a hammock styled blanket with built in soft handles yet it offers so many benefits. Without stooping parents can use this to lift, lay and rock their baby without back strain. Once the baby is in all you have to do is simply lift and place in prams, supermarket trollies, car seats etc. Here comes the best bit- your baby will stay asleep when you lift them out of a car seat! No more carrying that cumbersome item. And, no need to carefully move your arm from under the head when you lay a baby down. Only one hand needed to place your baby wherever you want them. Say goodbye to that bending up and down repetition with intermittent whaling. It’s the perfect solution for gaining a few more desperately needed parental breaks. It’s one of those inventions which will make parenting so much easier for us all. It ticks all the right boxes and therefore deserves- Full marks!

Written by Mike Edwards (Partner at Snugglebundl Ltd)