Review: Sporty Bump Ltd ‘Robe-Around’ Towel for Mum-To-Bes

I was recently given the opportunity to test out and review Sporty Bump Ltds brilliant new product for Mum-To-Bes – the ‘Robe-Around‘ Towelling Robe.

A stylish looking towel-wrap with Velcro fastenings at the top, it’s a brilliant idea and an essential for any Mum-To-Bes who attend gym/exercise classes/go swimming or are hitting the beach during their pregnancy.

What’s so special about it? I hear you say. Well, let me enlighten you:

Firstly, I am now 8 months pregnant and BabyBump is, well, rather large. My normal bath towels are all very well but they no longer work like they used to when I try to wrap them around myself after a swim or a shower – there tends to be a gap somewhere around the place which isn’t so bad at home but is less great when you’re in a changing room full of strangers. The ‘Robe-Around‘ is brilliantly designed to combat this with a clever pleated design that expands with BabyBump as you go along. Therefore sparing you the little flashes of flesh as you dry your hair with your towel wrapped round you.

Clever expanding pleat design.

Which brings me on to the Velcro strip at the top of the towel. Now, I’ve had a wrap-around towel in the past where the Velcro, whilst a good idea in theory, just drove you mad. It stuck to everything, not just where it was meant to, and snagged at the towel making it look scruffy and tatty very quickly. And as for washing it. Well, if I pulled one sock off it, I pulled off a hundred, even when I had carefully stuck it to itself before I put it in the washer. Needless to say, it has now been relegated to the back of the cupboard.

The ‘Robe-Around’ is different – the Velcro strip at the top is softer than normal Velcro and doesn’t stick or catch in the towel at all yet sticks very firmly to the strip it is meant to. Excellent! It also didn’t stick to a single other garment in the washing machine when I washed it.

Also, the strip is designed to be long enough to accommodate ALL Mum’s-To-Be, whether you are a size 8 or 20 it will be plenty big enough and fasten securely round you AND Bump.

This velcro fastening was a total saving grace when I took my toddler swimming. Anyone who has done this will understand the trial that is getting both yourself and a toddler dry and dressed after a swim.

Toddlers have a way of wandering at high speed in directions they shouldn’t, which makes getting yourself dry and dressed without ending up running nakedly round the changing room after them a bit of a challenge. Which is a source of horror if you are as self-conscious as me, especially when I have added Bump. Being able to fasten the ‘Robe-Around’ and have my hands free was brilliant – I could retrieve Tori from the entrance to the shower without dropping my towel in a puddle and leaving my dignity in the nearest locker. I managed to get changed without showing off any more flesh than I wanted to regardless of Tori’s utter refusal to stay put once I’d got her changed.

As well as being practical and invaluable when you need your hands free, the ‘Robe-Around’ looks really good, making it an ideal accessory for if you are going on a holiday somewhere with a beach. You’d look great after a swim in the sea with this on

When I first pulled it from it’s packaging the thought ‘it’s not very soft and snuggly’ did spring to mind, however, after washing the ‘Robe-Around’ before I used it the first time, as advised on the packaging, it lost almost all of the rough new-ness that I had felt and I almost forgot that I was worried about it being scratchy. That first wash also got rid of any lose fluffy bits that inevitably come on new towels.

So there you have it. The ‘Robe-Around’ from Sporty Bump Ltd. I absolutely love it and highly recommend it to any Mum-To-Be out there.

It costs just £20 plus p&p, is 100% cotton and is fully machine washable.

Go buy yours now at www.sportybump.co.uk and don’t forget to check out all their other great products, perfect for active Mum-To-Bes who want a bit of style and comfort through their pregnancy.

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Disclaimer: Many thanks to Sporty Bump and Lesley at LSMedia for allowing me to review this brilliant product. I received one ‘Robe Around’ Towel for the purpose of the review, no other payment was offered or received.

Review: Sanctuary Spa Covent Garden – Mum To Be Range

I was never one of those girls with a beauty regime – I tried the whole cleanse, tone & moisturise thing but forgot about it after about a week, I never had the patience to sit and straighten my hair and I still can’t do eye-liner very well. Thus, when it came to being pregnant, the thought of buying moisturiser or anything else for my skin didn’t even cross my mind – I just put up with the mad itching and resigned to the stretch marks.

That was last time. This time I was very kindly bought the Sanctuary Spa Covent Garden Mum To Be Pure Pamper Bag as a gift, and I already wish I’d known about it all last time!!

The gift set contains 3 different products all with different qualities but all with the purpose of pampering your poor skin as it gets battered by the ‘joys of pregnancy’.

Firstly I set about using the Mum to Be Soft Skin Bath Soak whilst visiting my Mum (I have a stash of bubble bath at her house as our flat only has a shower…).

Never sure how much of these things to use I sprinkled a fair amount of the granules into the tub and then some more (because you can never have too many bubbles, right?). The fragrance that came from the bath was divine and instantly relaxing all by itself. It wasn’t chemically like some bath fragrances and nor was it overpowering, despite my enthusiasm with the quantities. Bath run, I slipped in and enjoyed a fairly lengthy soak, making the most of the opportunity to stretch out tense muscles and just lie there whilst someone else chased Tori round. The scent never faded and lingered deliciously on me when I finally dragged myself out and returned to the madness outside the bathroom door.

Next up was the Mum to Be Supple Skin Shower Oil, which I admit I was a bit dubious about using due to the fact that it was an ‘oil’ and looked suspiciously like what I use to fry eggs in. But hey, I’ll try (almost) anything once.

After reading the back of the bottle I poured some out onto my flannel and proceeded to apply the oil to bump and the rest of my body only to find that I wasn’t experiencing any of the ‘light foaming’ mentioned in the blurb. Feeling a little like I should be standing in a frying pan and not a shower I decided to just give the old ‘pour it in your hand and slap it on’ method a go to see if I could persuade out any bubbles. Success! Once I got over the sensation of warm oil in my hand instead of the usual cool shower gel I discovered that just rubbing it in with your hands created a lovely gentle foam that totally over-rode the oily feeling applying with the flannel had left me with. It went on smoothly, smelled lovely and washed off easily. The floor of the shower was a little slippy immediately after I washed it off but the bottle did warn me of that and I have the luxury of a seat installed in my shower so I was sitting down anyway.

Afterwards my skin was noticeably soft and I felt like I’d had a proper clean after using something that wasn’t just all perfume and colouring. Fab!

Finally we come to my favourite product in the set, the Mum to Be Collagen Boosting Body Butter.

Now, as you may have guessed I’m not up on my beauty-speak and actually haven’t a clue what Collagen is or why I want to boost it but that aside, this stuff is brilliant. I suffered a lot with itchiness in my first pregnancy, especially on Bump when my stretch marks were developing, expanding and afterwards when they were recovering. I just put up with it (and moaned about it to everyone…sorry about that one, folks). By the time I received this set I was beginning to get to that stage again, the stretch marks were returning and so was the heat-rash-style itching that went with them. Three days of applying this body butter before I went to bed and after my morning shower and the difference was amazing. I very rarely itched at all (unless I got over-heated) and my skin felt smoother, softer and looked much healthier. I know this is probably a combined thing from all three products but the body butter seems to have had the most noticeable effects.

I am endlessly grateful to Paula for treating me to this gift set and highly recommend all the products in it to any Mum-To-Bes out there – buy it before the itching and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to miss it entirely and just enjoy the glow you get instead!