Member-only story
Necessities, Parents, and Invention: The TUBzi Journey
The clever bathtime hack taking on a life of its own.
It is a rite of passage for every expecting parent: compiling The List. I’m talking, of course, about the list of feeding supplies (bottles, pumps, nursing covers), safety items (car seats and bases), hygiene items (nasal aspirators, nail clippers) and other baby must-haves that every new parent is convinced they’ll need. Similarly, it is a rite of passage for every veteran parent to roll their eyes and say, “You won’t use half that stuff.”
And indeed, as a veteran parent of two children who are now in elementary school, I can confirm that there are indeed things I never used. Those baby mittens were adorable, but utterly useless. Ditto for the matching knit caps. My husband and I still laugh about the eco-friendly reusable changing pad liner that went straight into the garbage after an epic blowout in my oldest daughter’s first few weeks of life.
When I see new parents anxiously shopping for baby items, I’m tempted to bust out that eye-rolling line myself. But there are a few items, practical items that hadn’t yet come on the scene in my baby parenting days, that give me pause. I would have loved the rubber duckie bath temperature gauge that I saw on a friend’s Instagram story. I’m deeply envious of how many…