Ridge inventor milks it

By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

A Bay Ridge inventor is ready to go national with her innovative breast-feeding blouse — and she’s bringing her four children with her.

Mother is truly the mother of this invention, and entrepreneur Missy Reder owes her success to her four small children’s healthy appetites.

“I have always felt proud to be able to nurse my baby,” said Reder. “I never want to hide my baby under a blanket.”

Reder might never have invented her now-celebrated “Slurp and Burp” had she been able to find anything remotely helpful on the market when she had her fourth child last year.

So, she then did what all good inventors do; she took matters into her own hands.

“I was feeding the baby at 2 am when all of a sudden it came to me,” Reder said. “The whole design, everything, it all just came to me at once.”

Her invention is a sash that is worn over one shoulder and under the mother’s opposite arm, with an additional loop of layered cotton material — it’s patented, by the way! — that conceals the entire breast. The design allows the mother to be covered and the baby to be uncovered.

The rest, as they say, is “Slurp & Burp” (her husband gets credit for the name) history.

One mom who watched the invention in action thought it was brilliant.

“This idea is genius,” said Helen Vershavsky. “I wish they had these when I was nursing.”

Now Reder’s invention is the talk of baby land (or, at least, Babytalk Magazine, which will feature the invention in an August article that will call it a “must have” for moms who travel with an infant).

Reder isn’t the normal inventor; her trade by day is as a speech therapist and she is a regular at local yoga classes (not to mention raising four hungry children).

“I want to encourage other women to go ahead and follow their dreams,” said Reder. “We are all exhausted, but if there is something you want to pursue, don’t let a few dark circles stand in your way.”