From Grief to Groundbreaking: The Story Behind Hugs & Suds®

In her Legacy Bench conversation, Kiva Lownie shares her raw, emotional story. She is the inventor behind the world’s first patented, UKCA-tested shower-safe baby carrier. But this wasn’t created in a boardroom or brainstormed on a whiteboard. It was built in the middle of grief, ADHD, motherhood, and survival.

She opens up about losing her brother Steven at just 23, while she was seven months pregnant with her third child and already raising two young children. Life didn’t stop. Three months later, she gave birth, but the trauma stayed, quietly shaping everything that followed.

Then, years later, history repeated itself.

Her daughter, also seven months pregnant, lost her partner. The same stage of life. The same overwhelming grief. And once again, she found herself watching someone she loved try to function through the unimaginable.

She describes watching her daughter trying to shower,  holding her baby with one hand, crying, exhausted, and overwhelmed. What should have been a simple, everyday task suddenly felt unsafe, stressful, and impossible.

That moment became her “why.”

Hugs & Suds® was born from that reality. Not as a luxury, but as a necessity. A product designed to bring safety, comfort, and calm into one of the most vulnerable parts of a parent’s day.

But her story goes far beyond that single moment.

She speaks honestly about being diagnosed and medicated for ADHD at 43, after a lifetime of feeling like her mind was working against her. About navigating cancer, PTSD, single motherhood, and the emotional weight of being a carer, all while trying to hold herself together.

Her mission isn’t about recognition, it’s about impact. She wants parents who feel exhausted, alone, or unsafe to know that someone who has been there has created something for them.

There’s a quiet strength in how she shares her story. Honest, unfiltered, and deeply empathetic. She represents the people who feel everything deeply, who overthink, who carry more than they show… and proves that those same qualities can be the foundation for something powerful.

Her conversation is a reminder that even in life’s darkest moments, there is the potential to create something that helps others.