Irish Times, September 2007
By Ciaran Brennan

Necessity may be the mother of invention but mothering for the first time was the spark that led Ann Marie Durkin to develop and launch the world’s first pre-sterilised, ready-to-go soother.

She got the idea when she was in hospital with her first child. She was about to give him a soother when the nurse quickly stopped her and told her it needed to be sterilised.

There was so much work involved with a new baby, I just thought a ready sterilised soother would make my life less stressful,” she said.

When I came home on maternity leave, I started to do some searches to see if I could get some… I did patent searches and, to my absolute amazement, I couldn’t find a pre-sterilised soother anywhere in the world.

Aware that many medical products such as needles and syringes come pre-sterilised, Durkin carried out a research and feasibility study on manufacturing a pre-sterilised soother and found it was possible. She immediately set about commercialising a product, Steri-Soother™.