"When Andrea Mesplay of Danville gave birth to preemie twins seven years ago, she had no idea it would be the seminal event in founding a new business.
Leaving the infants in their incubators each night when she left the hospital was gut wrenching. Mesplay wanted to be there with them but the incubators allowed so little human contact. It was while she was making the rounds between home and hospital that she read an article about the sense of smell providing comfort for newborns.
Mesplay wanted to find an easy way to leave her scent with her babies while they were apart. The answer lay in a four-inch square swatch of fabric that could be placed inside her bra for a few hours, then given to the newborn or placed on its pillow.
"I knew from my reading that vivid geometric shapes in black and white were visible to the developing eyes of a newborn, so I decided to make the swatches visually stimulating as well as pleasing to the olfactory sense," said Mesplay. "I tried them with my sons, and they seemed to be immediately calmed. Possibly the biggest effect was on me as a mom. I felt so much less guilty leaving them at the hospital with the little squares left with them."
Mesplay's sons were released from the hospital and went on to be healthy infants, but she continued to use the "Care Squares," as she had now begun calling them. "I shared them with some other moms and they reported similar calming results," she said. The idea was so novel that Mesplay was awarded a U.S. patent for it.
As word of the new product spread, Mesplay was approached by a number of people in the Danville, Lexington and the Central Kentucky area who wanted to invest.
"People just think it is too good not to succeed," she said. "We took it to a convention of pediatric nurses and it was the hit of the show."
Today, the company has roughly 30 investors, more than half of whom are women. The list of shareholders includes five physicians and one physician's assistant.
"We're hoping we can get distribution in a variety of areas," she said. "We see the product as a gift item, something you might purchase for a friend who is having a baby, or something a mother or a mother-in-law might give to a prospective mom. There's no size to be wrong and no concerns about matching the dècor, so it is the perfect gift."
While working to develop gift store distribution, the product has been picked up by more than 25 neo-natal intensive care units across the United States who distribute it to mothers of premature infants.
Mobile Moms, LLC, was the name Mesplay and her shareholders decided to call the company. The company, which has its headquarters in Harrodsburg, Ky., intends to market additional products primarily to working mothers of premature babies, newborns and infants up to three months old.
"We have ideas for other products for busy mothers," Mesplay said, "but we want to firmly launch 'Care Squares' before introducing anything new."