The idea for Tummy Tub® came from a real-life situation, practicality and common sense of a young mother, Anita Belderok from Beuningen. Although the bathing of babies in buckets had been used and endorsed by Dutch midwives and nursery nurses for some time, it had never been introduced commercially.
For Dutch midwives and nursery nurses this ‘bucket therapy’ was already common practice, as they had found out that newborns were much more comfortable being bathed in a bucket, than in the mini-size version of the adult bath, commonly used since the fifties for bathing babies.
Most babies have trouble adapting to their new world after being in the mother’s womb for nine months. Noise, bright light, less control of movement due to gravity at full force, hunger, thirst, digestion of food and a sensation of being lost in space without physical support, have to be coped with. This causes a lot of uneasiness for young human beings.
The resemblance of the mother’s womb in size, warmth all over the body, a sheltered / filtered environment, support from the walls and bottom, as well as sitting in a familiar foetal position, calms a baby (as well as adults) down. Due to the smaller water surface, the water also stays warmer for longer.
The initial idea won ‘Dutch Idea of the year’ in 1993. It took a marketing expert to recognize its full potential and to have it researched, developed and designed with the help of midwives, nursery nurses, child-psychologists, child-physiotherapists, gynaecologists and pediaetricians in the Netherlands to further understand and improve the idea and design of Tummy Tub®.
The basic design won favors by a panel of experts in the hospital, as it wasn’t only more practical and better for the baby, but also stimulated the bonding between parent and child and gave more sense of security to the baby and the parents, as the baby can be seen through the transparent polypropylene. TummyTub® babies are faster in both physical and cognitive development.
Because of the little water needed in the Tummy Tub® , parents can hold their baby with one hand and use the other to wash their child. Not only is this convenient, but it saves energy as well!
Naturally Tummy Tub® was designed without any sharp edges to harm the baby’s skin and made out of the most baby friendly materials. Reason why it has passed every safety regulation all over the world and comes out as ‘simply the best’ in every test against competitive products and is used in maternity wards and neonatal departments of hospitals all over the world.
Therefore, Tummy Tub® can truly claim to be second best (we wouldn´t dare to call our design the best, as the mothers womb is undisputed).
Welcome home, nearly as nice as mommy’s tummy.
Frank Hogestijn
