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Comment by indescions_2017 | Hacker News Reader

indescions_2017

>>> The Baby Bidet

Just wanted to say that I love this space. Smart products targeting ages 0-5. As well as smart business models to reduce waste. And promote recycling of baby products.

One example: Owlet smart sock monitor

https://owletcare.com/

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Yes, but (1) our nursery doesn't have a sink and our sink doesn't have room for baby things, and (2) holding a squirming baby over a bidet doesn't sound less messy to me. There's a lot of potential in the space, but this particular one needs practical user testing.

Baby Bidet is interesting, and anyone who has changed a diaper is probably brainstorming as they read this.

I could see it being something at mounts over the top of a toilet and the baby is covered around their waist with something like a kayak skirt. You'd need a foolproof way to do temperature control, either requiring: - a hot water line, usually not far from toilet but requires plumbing which is out for most people - precision heater and needs to be plugged in and will probably make people unhappy with its heat up speed unless its 220v

Good place to start prototyping might be to get a bunch of bumbo seats and start cutting the seats out of them enough to allow water flow but still give support so the little one isn't falling into the bowl.

Thinking about it more, step one for newborns that can't sit up yet could just be a changing table with a nice padded surface that drains directly into a toilet.

That could really be a great product, hope someone makes a run at that.

> That could really be a great product, hope someone makes a run at that.

You better make sure your insurance is bought and your engineering is on point: the first time your product scalds a baby is the end of your incredible journey.

yeah, that and inadequate support that leads to a child falling in some way seems like biggest risks and would need to be heavily accounted for.

For safety of the child might want to make it human driven with having the caretaker adjust the temp with a standard shower valve configuration combined with a built in cut off for anything above 105 F (or whatever scald temperature is, but I recall it being somewhere around there when I went through all the safety research with my son)

As a parent of several kids, diaper changing really seems like a solved problem. With a little practice it takes literally seconds for a wet diaper and a couple minutes for poo.

The most time consuming part of it all is the clothing unsnapping, re-snapping with winter clothing on.

Finally, the hardest part about the washing is getting the baby dry after to prevent rashes, not getting them clean. A couple flushable, bio-degradable wipes.

The last thing I want as a parent is another gadget that needs maintenance and/or refills.

As someone with a third newborn in the house right now, I agree. I can't see how a "baby bidet" makes any sense. The stuff that comes out of a baby's butt isn't something that makes sense to wash down a sink, especially once they're on solids. No hose attachment would get one of my turds down a sink, and the kids are already giving me a good run for my money in that department. It sounds way more disgusting than just dealing with it how we do now.

Eh, most of the turds go into the diaper, only what you can't wipe into the diaper goes down the drain. Its a really good way to avoid diaper rash, at any rate.

Diaper rash is largely due to not changing diapers frequently enough and not just cleaning after soiling. It's just excessive moisture / chafing The best way to cure diaper rash is to expose the bottom to the air for a long period of time.

The worst thing for nappy rash is the precense of both excrement and urine at the same time, as ammonia is created.

I agree. Before I had kids I thought changing dirty nappies would be horrible, but in reality it's just not a big deal.

The idea of holding a squirming, dirty baby, over a sink (no doubt while they decide they need to pee again) is just ludicrous - this can only have been conceived by someone without kids.

On the topic of the owlet - My twins were in the NICU for 4 and 7 weeks respectively. The nurses there spend the bulk of non-feeding time checking on and (almost always) turning off heart/respiration/pulse ox alerts. The alarms are not false positives, the values they are alerting are falling outside the norm range, but the nurses know that that _is_ normal. A number of new parents to the nicu would rush to get the nurses attention with every alert until the parents understood that the nurses are professionals and the alerts are, well, dumb.

Similar story -- my twins were in the NICU for 3 weeks. The alarms at first had us on edge. After a few days, they became white noise.

Yeah owlet does seem like a strange product for most people. A cynic would say it's a money grab for anxious parents. You can get medical grade monitors for high risk kids where SIDs is likely. But hopefully they get their 510k and show clinical utility as well as help research SIDs in general with expanded access.

Also, Smart Pipe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

Came here to post this. My favorite caricature of SV culture.

A better idea would be to funnel the "rinse" water into some kind of container from which it could be disposed of in the toilet as opposed to the sink. I can just hear my wife saying "not in my [bathroom or, worse, kitchen] sink you're not going to do that!"

Totally. As the father of an 18-month-old, as soon as I saw the baby bidet idea I really wished it existed!

Wouldn't a hand-held faucet inside a farmer's sink basically be the same thing?

There are bidet-like sprayers for spraying poop off of cloth nappies into the toilet[1]. There are also similar actual bidet attachments for toilets for adults[2]. I was thinking you could almost do the same thing as those and just make it smaller and low pressure.

[1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/SmarterFresh-Diaper-Sprayer-Premium-S...

[2] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/RinseWorks-Certified-Warranty-Pressur...

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