HOW TO KEEP A BABY DRY IN THE RAIN
(the runaway umbrella that started Mummio)
There is a very specific kind of stress that comes with trying to get a newborn from your house, to the car and to the pram in the rain.
It is not the dramatic kind, it is the quiet, frustrating, completely avoidable kind that happens in driveways and car parks across every single day. Trying to hold an umbrella, unclip a baby, keep the baby dry, keep yourself half dry, and juggle a nappy bag all at the same time.
This is the story of how one runaway umbrella, six weeks into motherhood, became the reason we started building the world's first hands-free umbrella for rainy car transfers. AND why it is proving to be much harder to engineer than we ever expected.
THE RUNAWAY UMBRELLA
My daughter Rio was six weeks old.
It had been raining for what felt like the entirety of her short life. I was desperate to leave the house, and escape our white walls. But the logistics of getting a newborn from the front door to the car without soaking her felt genuinely overwhelming.
So I improvised. I wedged my umbrella into the car door frame, propped it at an angle, and tried to buckle Rio into her car seat while keeping us both dry. It worked a treat, as long as there was no wind.
Then, one day there was wind.
A gust caught the umbrella mid-transfer and sent it tumbling down the street. A postie (a literal stranger on his delivery run) saw the whole thing and chased it down for me while I stood there in the rain, completely mortified.
That was the moment that sparked this idea.
One very simple thought: It shouldn't be this hard.
THE PROBLEM THAT HAD NOT BEEN SOLVED
Once I started paying attention, I realised this was not just my problem.
Every mum I spoke to had a version of the same story. Balancing umbrellas on shoulders. Racing between car and door. Getting soaked while the baby somehow stayed dry. Or simply not leaving the house on wet days at all.
Here is what struck me. We have engineered car seats with five-point harnesses and crash-tested capsules. We have built prams with all-terrain wheels and one-handed recline functions. But the actual moment of getting a baby from the car to anywhere else in the rain? Still just an umbrella and a prayer.
A few products exist that attempt to solve part of this. Clip-on umbrella holders that attach to a car door, designed to free up one hand during the transfer. They are a step in the right direction. But most rely on basic components that are not built to handle real wind. They only solve half the problem. They get the umbrella up. They do not necessarily give you both hands free for the entire transfer or they're not easy to use.
We wanted to solve the whole problem, properly, for true hands-free use.
WHY THIS HAS BEEN HARDER THAN IT LOOKS
When we started designing the Dry Transfer, our lead engineer admitted he thought it would be a relatively simple build. An umbrella. A mounting system. Done.
Turns out, it is considerably more complex than that.
The wind load problem
A deployed umbrella catches a huge amount of wind. We are engineering the Dry Transfer to remain fully intact in winds up to 40km/h. That means every component (the canopy, the ribs, the mounting mechanism) needs to be rated for forces well beyond what a standard umbrella ever experiences.
A flimsy mount might hold in still air. It might fail completely the moment a gust comes through. Which is exactly the scenario that started this whole project in the first place.
The mounting problem
This has been the real puzzle. Where do you actually attach a hands-free umbrella to a car?
Every vehicle is a different shape. Different curves, different window sizes, different proportions. Some cars do not even have the panel we were initially targeting.
Right now, we are exploring the rear quarter glass. That small triangular window panel near the back of most SUVs. It is present on a wide range of vehicles and sits in a useful position for coverage during a transfer.
But "wide range" is not "all," and we know it. Utes, in particular, often do not have this panel at all. Solving for genuine universal compatibility, across the huge variety of cars Australians actually drive, is proving to be one of the most technically demanding parts of the entire project.
The safety problem
Attaching anything to a car window introduces a risk that is easy to overlook. What happens if someone lowers the window while the product is still attached?
We are working through release mechanisms, including suction cup options designed to disengage safely before any damage occurs. Because a product that solves one problem by creating a new one is not a solution at all.
WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW
We have moved through extensive research, vehicle geometry analysis, sketching, and engineering calculations. The next phase is CAD. Translating everything we have learned into defined shapes, sizes, and mounting specifications for both the VHB tape and suction cup fixing options we are evaluating.
It is slower than I expected.
It is also, I think, exactly the kind of product that deserves to be built slowly and properly rather than rushed to market half-solved. Because if it fails, it fails with a baby involved. That is not something we are willing to get wrong.
WHY WE'RE BUILDING THIS IN THE OPEN
Most products get developed behind closed doors and arrive on shelves fully formed. With no visibility into the decisions, trade-offs, or failed attempts that got them there.
We are doing the opposite.
The Dry Transfer is being designed alongside a community of real Australian parents. People who understand the problem intimately because they have lived it. We share genuine engineering updates, including the unresolved challenges, because we believe the best products get built when real feedback shapes real decisions before a single unit goes into production.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The Dry Transfer is the second product in the Mummio range, following the Portable Safe Space. A foldable, portable playpen designed for exactly the kind of real-life parenting moments that do not get taken seriously enough by the products already on the market.
Both products share the same starting point. A genuine, lived frustration that turned into the belief that the things that should have existed already deserve to actually exist.
The Dry Transfer does not have a launch date yet. What it has is an engineering team taking the problem seriously, a growing community helping shape the solution, and a mum who remembers exactly what it felt like to watch her umbrella blow down the street with a baby in her arms.
Join the design community
Want to help shape how we solve this?
The Mummio Design Community is where real Australian parents test prototypes, share honest feedback, and have a say in what we build next. Members get early access to new products, founding member benefits, and a real voice in the design decisions we make.