Help needed for college, parenting project

68 lost souls

Hello.

I am really hoping some of you would be nice enough to help me with a college project I am doing. I am studying Product Design in the Dublin Institute of Technology. We need to develop a product to help make the lives of parents with children aged 0 - 24 months easier and we have made this survey to help us with a few ideas we have.

Click here to take the survey

I would really appreciate your help. The information is for use in college not as a retailer/manufacturer and Im sure if you look at my posts you will see I am a regular user of boards rather then some internet troll.

So please, if you could take minute to fill out this simple survey it would be greatly appreciated. We have to make a report on this by Wensday so before the weekend would be great and if you could ask your friends to fill it out it would be even better.

Thanks again,
68 Lost Souls

deisemum

Done

68 lost souls

Thanks for the help so far. Please keep them coming, and also if anyone has any issues that they feel are not currently being met by baby products at the moment feel free to talk about them here.

TargetWidow

Did it! Will have a think and get back here again later with more feedback.

beaushalloe

done, have no kids but did it from a childcare prespective.

TargetWidow

You know what I would find really handy?...(I'm looking for such a product at the moment). A type of lunchbag suitable for children being weaned onto solids who are going to creche. The idea is this. My DD is currently still on 4 bottles a day. Two of these she has at creche. One is a little 4oz bottle which she has with her little bowl of home-made vegetable purees at 11.30 and the other is a full 8oz feed at 2.30. She also has a drink of water out of her little sippy cup. So in the morning I pack 2 bottles, her sippy cup of water, her lidded bowl of veggies and her spoon. The bottles I put into one of those Avent neoprene bottle bags designed to keep them cool till I can put them into the fridge at the creche. I jam the spoon into the outside pocket of that along with the frozen icepack to keep them cool. The solids and sippy cup are currently stuffed into her changing bag which is far from ideal. Here's whats already in the changing bag every day...
10 nappies
Cotton Wool
Elave Unscented Baby Oil
Small container of Clearly Herbal Baby Wipes
Nappy bags
Two Muslins
Two Bibs
A full change of clothes
A Gro-bag
Milton wipes
Hand sanitizer
Spare clean soother
Her favourite toy.

And here's the hard part. I get to the creche. I have to wear the bottle bag and changing bag across my shoulders diagonally to stop them from falling off, then get 28 week old DD out of the car seat and balance her in one arm while holding my handbag in the other hand and locking the cardoor ;no central locking blipper in my car:(
While locking the door the changing bag often bursts open and makes me drop something else (never the baby though!) or as I did one day it distracted me into leaving the car keys stuck in the car door which prompted a 10 minute search of the creche before leaving and a near heart-attack on seeing that they were still in the car door!
So a lunch bag that could comfortably take 2 bottles a sippy cup a baby food bowl with a lid and (lets go mad now) a little cutlery case (something like the lovely Annabel Karmel one you can get in mothercare.) This would need to have a bottom that half zips off to allow a freezer pack to be inserted to keep the contents cool. If somehow this lunchbox/bag attached securely to the changing bag, like sitting on top of it but was easily removable and made it only necessary to carry one bag instead of two stuffed to the brim. I would buy that. I paid €88 for my changing bag (It matches the pram. It was a moment of madness. I would do it again!)

You've got me thinking now... I'll be back with more.

stovelid

Done.

68 lost souls

TargetWidow wrote: »

You know what I would find really handy?...(I'm looking for such a product at the moment). A type of lunchbag suitable for children being weaned onto solids who are going to creche. The idea is this. My DD is currently still on 4 bottles a day. Two of these she has at creche. One is a little 4oz bottle which she has with her little bowl of home-made vegetable purees at 11.30 and the other is a full 8oz feed at 2.30. She also has a drink of water out of her little sippy cup. So in the morning I pack 2 bottles, her sippy cup of water, her lidded bowl of veggies and her spoon. The bottles I put into one of those Avent neoprene bottle bags designed to keep them cool till I can put them into the fridge at the creche. I jam the spoon into the outside pocket of that along with the frozen icepack to keep them cool. The solids and sippy cup are currently stuffed into her changing bag which is far from ideal. Here's whats already in the changing bag every day...
10 nappies
Cotton Wool
Elave Unscented Baby Oil
Small container of Clearly Herbal Baby Wipes
Nappy bags
Two Muslins
Two Bibs
A full change of clothes
A Gro-bag
Milton wipes
Hand sanitizer
Spare clean soother
Her favourite toy.

And here's the hard part. I get to the creche. I have to wear the bottle bag and changing bag across my shoulders diagonally to stop them from falling off, then get 28 week old DD out of the car seat and balance her in one arm while holding my handbag in the other hand and locking the cardoor ;no central locking blipper in my car:(
While locking the door the changing bag often bursts open and makes me drop something else (never the baby though!) or as I did one day it distracted me into leaving the car keys stuck in the car door which prompted a 10 minute search of the creche before leaving and a near heart-attack on seeing that they were still in the car door!
So a lunch bag that could comfortably take 2 bottles a sippy cup a baby food bowl with a lid and (lets go mad now) a little cutlery case (something like the lovely Annabel Karmel one you can get in mothercare.) This would need to have a bottom that half zips off to allow a freezer pack to be inserted to keep the contents cool. If somehow this lunchbox/bag attached securely to the changing bag, like sitting on top of it but was easily removable and made it only necessary to carry one bag instead of two stuffed to the brim. I would buy that. I paid €88 for my changing bag (It matches the pram. It was a moment of madness. I would do it again!)

You've got me thinking now... I'll be back with more.

Wow, that is a lot just to get your DD from the car to the creche. Thanks a lot for your input. Glad to hear the car was still there when you returned, it must be easy to forget about something like that when you have so many other things to think about at the same time. I'm sure this is something other parents have to deal with too. Any one else agree?

the glass woman

I second everything Targetwidow said, my 14month isn't in creche but as a stay at home mam we go out most days to play groups and to meet other mother, so i still have to pack almost as much as was listed. The lunch cooler bag is something i have searched for, just a cool bag big enough to take all of his lunch and snacks and bottles, but not quite as big as the picnic coolbags on sale! But i couldn't find one. I too spent 80 euro on a matching nappy bag that hardly fits half of what i need..and it has happened that a bottle of water leaked and soaked his spare change of clothes, so having a separate bag that attaches on to the nappy bag would be genius.

Dfens

Hey TargetWidow,
In my kids creche they let us bring in a bag of all this stuff & a pack of nappies & leave it there for the kids, they just wanted everything to be labelled with the child's name. The staff would let us know if they were running low on anything such as nappies & send home any soiled clothes which you'd just replace the next day.

If your DD creche will do this, it will save you lugging a huge bag of babystuff around every day. Glad to hear the car was still there, I think we've all had moments like that.....:D

TargetWidow

Hi girls,
I'd love to leave some stuff in the creche too, but the baby room where she is now is tiny which is an advantage in that there are only a total of 3 babies including herself so lots of attention for her, but a disadvantage when it comes to space for leaving stuff there. They have a canister of her formula in the kitchen and have said I can leave a packet of nappies in the changing room for her but theres so much else to bring. The mad thing is that in under 6 months she'll graduate from the baby room and go into the toddler room in the same place and have ten times more space but by then wont need half the stuff!!:D Thanks for the sympathy about the car keys, the car wouldn't really have been missed, but the keys to my Post Office were on it too!!!:eek: I'm getting better though. Its genetic. My Dad used always laughingly tell the story of how my mam was so busy modelling her size 10 skintight sasparillas in the carpark of the hospital that she forgot me! He asked her if she had everything and she said "yup", Ah.. what did you come in for Chris?.,..... O jaysus! The child!" They're both passed on now but it's nice to know I'm not the only one loosing my mind!:o

68 lost souls

There is some really usefull information here, thanks. Still working on the report and presentation so hopefully all will go well. If you can think of any other issues you may have, especially with regards to the lunch box idea it would be great.