Friday, June 1, 2007

Engineering Baby Stuff

Baby Peter sleeping on his changing pad wearing a headlamp.Combo Jogging Stroller and Car SeatPeter being held by grandpa and fed using Tim's invention.
Being a good engineer, I discovered a need for innovation in our baby equipment.

The first innovation is pretty minor, but useful and I thought it looked nicer with three pictures across the top. The multifunctional changing pad is great as a sleeping pad for Peter when we are camping. We set him on his pad just in front of our heads, that way he is convenient to change in the middle of the night. I don't even have to exit my sleeping bag and he is already on the pad.

Your basic stroller is a piece of junk! It bounces and jerks over every crack on the sidewalk and is useless for anything slightly rough. Grass, dirt paths, gravel road, rough asphault forget it. Hard to push and it shakes poor Peter so much I'm afriad he's going to get hurt. After a bit of sizing things up, I discovered that the Infant Car Seat fits quite nicely into the stroller. The shoulder straps from the jogging stroller snugly clip into the seatbelt slots on the side of the car seat and a piece of cord runs around the back of the carseat and through the frame to hold the proper angle.

The pacifier and syringe combo were rigged up as a supplemental feeding system aka "giving poor mommy a break". This way daddy can feed Peter once a day (5am) and mommy can sleep in. We discovered this to be better than a bottle because it didn't give Peter any bad habits that make it hard to feed in the traditional manner. The way it works is a small hole is poked in the end of a pacifier. The pacifier is turned inside out as much as possible. The feeding tube is pushed through the hole slightly and super glued in place on the back side (front side when it's inside out). It is then turned right side out and the tube trimmed flush. The baby is forced to suck down the plunger down on his own. If you need to speed up a feeding, slight pressure may be added to the plunger. If the syringe is old, the plunger may have a tendancy to travel down at an angle and require extra pressure.

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