Tummy With Mummy®, the world’s only foldaway off-the-floor tummy time activity centre has won the Glasgow’s Got Business Talent Award. The ‘Dragon’s Den’ panel of entrepreneurs and investors were looking for innovation and market potential.

“We’re delighted at the award because it recognises that bringing something new and worthwhile to the market is still celebrated” said Geraldine Abrahams, director of TWM Productions Ltd. “It’s easy to be passionate about something that helps improve children’s lives, but we are under no illusions that it is a slog getting recognition in a very sophisticated marketing arena.”

The increasing problem of delayed motor skill development in infants is a big problem for parents and it has not been sufficiently addressed by tummy time mats. Parents are unhappy seeing their infants face-down on the floor – and most babies hate being there!

Tummy With Mummy® is the world’s only all-in-one off the floor tummy time activity centre. It comes complete with a seat (with harness), recliner, and tummy time platform – and folds flat for storing or taking on trips. Wipe-clean, with a machine washable mat, it is an essential aid for babies’ physical, social and emotional development. Our testimonials speak for themselves.

See the Tummy with Mummy at babyREFLUX

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Totseat, the award-winning chair harness, was delighted to be included in the Which? Toddler Travel Essential Guide for Christmas.

This accolade rounds off a great year for Totseat which has included winning the much coveted Practical Parenting GOLD for the Best Booster/Travel Highchair, The Tots to Travel Feeding Award and a Practical PreSchool Gold Award. In addition, Totseat’s international expansion has continued, as has growth in the UK with Hippychick.

Designed from a safety perspective, the Totseat travel highchair anchors a baby in safety and comfort in an adult chair. It adapts quickly and easily to fit chairs of all shapes and sizes, and clips firmly behind the chair, with the minimum of fuss. Machine, washable, pocket sized and with a lifetime guarantee, it’s the perfect accessory: funky yet practical.

Whether at granny’s, the local cafe or in the Med, Totseat gives parents peace of mind for those ‘no highchair’ moments. Perfect for Christmas…and babies who lunch.

See the Totseat at babyREFLUX

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Tummy With Mummy® is the world’s first and only all-in-1 off-the-floor tummy time activity centre with built in tummy time platform, seat and recliner.

Perfect for refluxers who need a comfortable place to nap or sit after feeding. Also great for plagiocephaly and flat head syndrome.

It comes complete with a safety harness and it cleverly folds away compactly for easy storage and travel. Features: All parents want their child to be strong, healthy, happy and smart. We want that too. Tummy With Mummy®, our unique all-in-1 tummy time activity centre, is designed to improve babies’ physical, social, emotional development and motor responses in those precious months. Its high sides, solid back and safety harness can make babies feel safe.

Check out the Tummy with Mummy Seat and Recliner in full at babyREFLUX.

Features:

• Helps to control reflux
• Reduces the risk of flat head and plagiocephaly
• Portable and storable
• Washable and wipe-clean
• Strengthens muscles
• Ideal for taking on trips
• Improves motor responses
• Improves infant development

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We recently hooked up with Jacqui Nancey a trouble shooting midwife who specialises in Breastfeeding, baby colic & sleepless nights. With years of experience and colleagues input, Jacqui has put together a fantastic wholesome guide for breastfeeding mothers to use. With her permission, we have included it here:

What foods to take or avoid in the first 6 – 12 weeks after birth.

FRESH FRUITS
Bananas / plantain (very ripe)    - Potassium, Magnesium (Mag)
Apples                                               – Potassium, Vit C
Pears                                                 – Potassium, Vit C
Peaches                                            – Potassium, Vit C
Plums                                               – potassium, b-carotene
Pineapple                                        – Vit C, Mag

* DRINK WATER                        – Most effective thirst quencher for hydration

DRIED FRUITS
Mangoes                                      – Potassium, iron
Sultanas, currants                     – Mag, Pots, niacin B3, Vit C, E
Apricots                                       – Potassium, iron, copper
Paw paws                                    – b-carotene, Mag, Pots, iron
Dates, baby figs                        – carotenoids, Vit C, Pots

AVOID: Cranberry juice, Lemonade, Citrus fruits/Berries, Strawberries, Grape juice, Lime juice, Fizzy drinks, Alcohol, Curries (If not part of a cultural diet)

CEREALS
Quinoa                                      – Iron
Organic millet                            – Iron, magnesium
Rolled grain oats                        – Magnesium
Oatibix / wheatabix                    – Iron / copper / magnesium
no added sugar muesli               – Mag, cop, Niacin, Vit E

AVOID: Sugary cereals, tarts, processed cereals and Processed fine oats.

FRUIT JUICES                       Wholesome Fruit smoothies
Apple juice                                  With Apricot/Avocado/banana/carrot/melon/passion fruit
Pineapple                                    Mango/peach/coconut/vanilla/pear/kiwi/ginger/yoghurt
Litchi                                          ALL OF THE ABOVE

VEGETABLE / SMOOTHIES  / SOUPS
Spinach                                       With Celery or cucumber / leek / tomatoes / green beans
Broccoli / Cauliflower                    WASHED DOWN WITH STRONG FENNEL OR PEPPERMINT TEA
Egg plant/Aubergene                    With Oily fish/salad/beetroot/lettuce/mushrooms/okra/pea
Peppers                                      ALL OF THE ABOVE/Root vegetables/chicken/lamb/beef/egg

DELICIOUS NUTS: FIRST CHECK YOUR FAMILY NUT ALLERGY HISTORY
Pine nuts / pistachios / brazil nuts /sun flower & pumpkin seeds
Dry roasted nuts / mixed fruit & nut snack

ROOT VEGETABLES / FRESH / DRIED BEANS
Butter nut squash / turnips / suede
Carrots, courgettes / sweet corn / tofu / butter beans
Yellow split peas / red kidney beans / baked beans / black eyed beans /haricot beans
Potatoes / pumpkin / parsnip / sweet potatoes / yellow plantains ?(NB: Wash down bean soups with fennel or peppermint tea afterwards to prevent your baby’s tummy discomfort from the resultant gas)

MEAT, POULTRY & FISH
Lean Beef / mince / steak / grilled burger / 100% beef meat balls
Lean Lamb / mince / grilled kebabs /
Oily fish like Mackerel, sardines
Other fish like Tilapia (St. Peters ) cod

WHOLESOME HERBAL TEA
Fennel tea                                 – (3 or so mugs/ day)
Peppermint Tea                          – (3 or so mugs/ day)
Fenugreek                                 – (2 – 3 mugs/day only)
Green tea                                  – (Limit intake 1-2)
Decaff teas /coffee                     – (limited intake)
Malt drinks / Milk

DRINKS TO AVOID – Fizzy water / drinks, Instant coffee / tea, Squash drinks

(C) JACQUI NANCEY NEWBORNS
Practical Baby care tips: www.newbornparentingcourse.com

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Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), in common use for treating gastric reflux symptoms in babies, are unnecessary and ineffective in this age group, concludes an Australian systematic review.

Published in Pediatrics, the review of 12 studies of almost 900 children aged 0-17 noted the paucity of evidence to support the current widespread prescribing of PPIs in infants, as well as in older children.

Although some guidelines recommend considering antisecretory treatments for distressed infants or for children and adolescents with heartburn, the authors noted the evidence to support this had been “extrapolated from adult studies”.

Furthermore, clinical recovery with PPIs “may be ascribed to a placebo reaction or physiologic symptom resolution over time”, the authors wrote.

The review found that for reduction of GORD symptoms in infants, PPIs were not effective in two studies, equally effective in two studies compared with placebo, and more effective in just one study compared with hydrolysed formula.

Meanwhile, placebo-controlled trials in older children were lacking.

For gastric acidity in infants and children, PPIs were more effective compared with placebo, alginates or ranitidine in four studies.

And for reducing histologic aberrations, the studies showed no difference between PPIs compared with ranitidine and alginates.

Although PPIs were generally well-tolerated, the authors noted they “may increase susceptibility to acute gastroenteritis and community acquired pneumonia, respiratory infections, gastric polyps, and bacterial overgrowth”.

Speaking with Gastroenterology Update, study co-author, Dr Taher Omari from the Women and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide said that “on balance you have to accept that the weight of evidence suggests that these drugs are not very effective in treating infants with gastroesophageal reflux disease”.

He added that diagnosing GORD in infants was “extremely problematic” and a process of elimination.

“PPIs have been the mainstay of treatment in babies with GORD symptoms…and anecdotally the paediatricians and the parents all believe that these drugs are effective in reducing vomiting and irritability,” he said.

However, he said there had now been a number of RCTs, including in Australia, showing that half the babies on placebo improved significantly. Meanwhile no trials had demonstrated significant improvement in infants given PPIs “no matter what drug you’re looking at”.

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Acid reflux is a painful nuisance for most who suffer symptoms such as heartburn, but it can lead to pneumonia and worse for infants. Just detecting it – often by inserting a tube through the nose into the esophagus – can be traumatic.

But Michigan State University neonatologist Ira Gewolb is testing a far less invasive diagnostic method he developed for babies, supported by a university technology commercialization partnership.

Preemies and their parents are accustomed to invasive procedures, Gewolb said, “but if you try to put a tube down a one-and-a-half-year-old’s nose for 24 hours, it’s not a pretty picture.” X-rays often are used instead, he added, but aren’t always reliable.

Gewolb and laboratory associate Frank Vice are refining a prototype for a neonatal gastroesophageal reflux monitor based on a common engineering instrument, the accelerometer. Taped to an infant’s chest, it picks up low-frequency sound as reflux backs up from the stomach into the esophagus.

More than half of newborns suffer from acid reflux, ranging in severity “from the happy spitters to the scrawny screamers” who resist feeding, Gewolb said, but the vast majority outgrow it after they start to sit up. Ex-preemies are especially susceptible, however, and often go home with medications that themselves have side effects. He hopes the monitor, being tested currently at Sparrow Hospital’s neonatology unit, ultimately can be approved for use in preemies as well as older infants and even certain adults.

Gewolb, chief of the Division of Neonatology in the MSU College of Human Medicine, is one of seven MSU faculty inventors winning technology transfer grants this year from the Michigan Initiative for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and a predecessor program.

The grants are meant to help bridge the difficult financial chasm separating campus lab developments from their commercialization. MIIE includes Michigan’s 15 state universities with funding from the C.S. Mott Foundation, the New Enterprise Initiative for Southeast Michigan and the Dow Foundation.

“Federal funding of research enables the development of basic science concepts, but there is often a gap in funding as the science becomes more applied or product oriented,” said Charles A. Hasemann, interim technology transfer office chief and executive director of MSU Business-CONNECT. “These grant programs fill that gap and help move the technology from the nascent stage to proof of concept and on to prototype. The grants are invaluable in helping to move MSU’s technologies toward commercialization.”

The MSU innovations boosted this year by such funds include a method to preserve subsoil water; cost-effective biofuel material pre-treatment; a less-invasive spinal fusion method; protein tagging for bioscience lab work; a heart performance monitor; and an advanced water oxygen sensor. Earlier grants backed MSU laser technology developer Marcos Dantus and hybrid vehicle engine innovator Norbert Mueller.

Grantees are working with the university’s technology transfer office, MSU Technologies, to patent and then license their innovations to companies or investors that can bring them to market. The reflux monitor has been under development for about a decade, Gewolb said, spun out from his work applying accelerometers to infant feeding and swallowing problems.

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Our sister site ‘Little Refluxers’ has been featured in a Daily Mirror article – hooray! The article written by Lynne Hyland was featured in the paper on the 16th January 2011.

The article Acid reflux a crying shame for babies can be found here…

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