Portland dad's baby bottle brainchild gets a grip on the market
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PORTLAND, Ore. - It's said necessity is the mother of invention, but for one Portland dad, it might be the father.
A few years ago, Travis Hendricks noticed his 3-month old daughter, Mathilda, wanted to hold her own baby bottle but couldn't get her little hands around it.
"I thought, well, I should make some little handles for it," Hendricks recalled. "I took one of her existing toys and fashioned it to make a bottle fit into it, and handed it to her and it became her bottle."
Like a lot of kids just learning to talk, she called it her "ba" (pronounced "bah"). And everywhere they went, other parents noticed it - and asked where they could get it.
"It was really the businessman in a Starbucks in Seattle who was really serious about where I got it, and after talking to him, I realized if I don't make this for people, then he was going to," he said.
Travis formed a company, called "the original," with two partners and the "ba" was born, hitting shelves about a year ago both locally and online. And it's selling.
Fellow dad and friend of Hendricks, Ray Gordon, is a fan.
He said it was a milestone for his child when he started using it. "It's like sitting up or anything, or walking, a big moment - you're like, WOW!" he said. "He definitely started learning how to use his hands a little bit more, because of it."
Gordon said the ba has also given him a small measure of freedom. "It liberated one hand," he said with a laugh.
The ba, which costs $15, is available at Canoe in Portland, Chuck's Place in Lake Oswego and online at Amazon.
Wonderful invention! We can put our tiny babies in those plastic car seat things on the floor with their plastic baby bottle holders and artificial milk and if we're lucky we won't have to touch them except for the occasional diaper change or transfer to crib!
hehe cute idea.. I think this is more then a craze, I think this will be a longtime seller.
lol.. cute, my daughter called her bottle the "ba-ba"