Just Have A Baby? There’s An App For That!

by Cre’shea Hilton

As a postpartum doula I get asked a lot by my clients which app I prefer most for having a newborn to manage the new baby’s life. As a person who just came into the smart phone world less than a year ago, I found myself at a
loss, so I decided to do some research.

Isn’t it a bummer though that the baby doesn’t come with an organizer of some kind? I think the baby box they send you home with at the hospital should have a planner in it, so that you know that baby needs to block out all visitors for that 3rd week because she’ll be crying and cluster feeding instead! (Oh, and Tuesdays are no good for him either because, those are her poopy blow out days. Who knew?)

I entrusted the ever-faithful Internet to help me track down the most popular apps and find out which of them really did what new moms are asking for. There are tons of apps to sort through, some free some not, but it’s easy enough to take the word of other mothers when they say, that an app saved their life in those new weeks as a parent. Here are 3 popular and frequently used apps among the “I have a new baby and I need to remember when he ate or pooped last” consumer.

A small checklist of things an app should have: Timers (a variety), diary/log, appointment reminders, syncing abilities with other phones, visual graphs/charts and they have to be user friendly. The top apps being used by moms (from my own research) are BabyConnect, Feed Baby and Total Baby.

These apps are very similar in nature, but a few discerning features separate them from one another.

BABYCONNECT has 10 timers that can cover all your basic needs: Last nursing side, dirty diapers, bottle feed, etc. It even has a start/stop/pause feature. BabyConnect is great if you’re into an app that is visually appealing.

TOTAL BABY has 14 timers that cover a variety of needs including baths, pumping or the design your own category, which I find to be a great feature. Total Baby holds unlimited data and that data can be exported in numerous ways. It isn’t as visually attractive as I’d imagine a baby app could be, but it does allow you to sync other devices to the one account.

FEED BABY has a free and paid version. The free version does a great job tracking feeding, baby statistics and medicines. It’s great if you are on a budget and want to try out an app before purchasing.

What did I learn? Not all apps are created equally. Some apps are more in depth than someone may need. Some apps are worth that $5 if it saves your sanity. But here’s the best part, millions of moms before us did it without an app and survived and so did their babies. If the thought of buying and using an app is more overwhelming than say, using a piece of paper and pencil, then go with what feels right. Sometimes doing it the simple way is the easiest.

Cre’shea Hilton is a practicing Postpartum Doula with Salem Birth Support Doula Services in Salem, OR. When she isn’t offering support to new families you can find her chasing her own brood of 2 boys around–children who both survived without her using a tracking app (just her trusty “mom brain”).