In the second half of our pregnancy the nurse at our doctor's office always asked if the baby was kicking a lot and at first we thought she was just being friendly. Then we realized she was asking us a medical question and that we should be paying closer attention to kicking frequency which, after the first month or two, had lost its novelty. Had we been wearing a Kickbee our baby's every kick, be it it a punt or wallop, would be announced and recorded on Twitter.
We first read about the Kickbee, a prototype invention of Corey Menschler, which was mentioned in a New York Times article, Putting Twitter’s World to Use, by Claire Cain Miller and we've continued reading about it on Corey's online portfolio. He writes, As an expectant father, I am once-removed from the physical knowledge my wife has of our baby and its development. With the Kickbee, I wanted to create a device that would give me a chance to be aware of our baby's movements.
Personally we can't imagine wearing this belt around the house much less in public, but Menschler's idea garnered so much interest after he demonstrated it at the recent ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) Show in New York that he's considering marketing the device.
The Kickbee's Twitter feed has turned into more of a publicity mechanism since Corey's son, Tyler, was born in January, but it didn't take long for Tyler to start tweeting...
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
omg, the belt seems like an okay idea, but the twitter feed is ridiculous.
view saltyc's profile
now, come on.
view Sol's profile
and uh, the plural. It's just annoying.
view Sol's profile
really?
really?
view littlewhirl's profile
Yuck! All this does is remind me of all the stupid non-stress tests I had to have (and am still paying for) at the end of my pregnancy due to elevated blood pressure, despite the fact that my baby was doing excellent and I could tell the nurses that based on how many kicks I was feeling. Just count them yourself and put your money towards something more productive. The Twitter part seems totally absurd to me and just another example of how parents (myself included at times!) think that everyone else wants to know all the mundane details of their pregnancy when in actuality, they don't care at all.
view upstategirl's profile
LOL. I bet your single and childless freinds would stop speaking to you!
view drjulee's profile
Hi, Kickbee creator here. One of the most common misconceptions about my project and its use of Twitter is that it is like Facebook...that your friends and millions of strangers will be inundated with messages about your baby kicking and make them hate you forever!
My main reason for choosing Twitter was to receive text messages when the baby kicked. Twitter's platform makes it very easy (and free) to accomplish this. However, I also knew that Twitter feeds can be PRIVATE. I didn't make the prototype's feed private since the project was developed for a graduate school class. However, I expect normal users would keep their Kickbee feeds restricted to the parents and family. But even if they didn't, the only ones who would see the updates would be those who explicitly chose to "follow" that feed, and would have nobody to blame but themselves. This is a very different notion than Facebook's "NewsFeed", which pushes every mundane action on the site to ALL of your friends. Ugh.
I didn't create the Kickbee to help mothers track fetal activity, that's just a secondary use. Without further development it might not pick up the tiny rumblings when the baby simply rolls or rotates, which your doctor certainly counts as movement. I made it for the fathers who want to be involved and know what's happening with his wife's body and developing child. In particular, the Kickbee could provide a unique connection for separated families, like soldiers who are deployed thousands of miles away from their wives. But it may even provide a little connection for families who are separated by a daily commute.
I hope that sheds a little light on it. I love the site...been reading Apartment Therapy for years!
view kickbee's profile