When our baby was born, the hospital provided a form to track baby’s activities: feeding and diaper changes. In the beginning days of life, it’s vitally important to track input and output to ensure that baby is being properly nourished, especially if she is being breastfed. It also provided columns for tracking how many minutes per breast your baby nursed on; if baby was fed by bottle, what kind of formula given and how much; diaper changes specified wet or stool. It was so helpful to me that I continued keeping the log, but found having to keep a clipboard always at hand somewhat cumbersome.
While I was browing for games on the App Store on my iPod Touch, I thought of doing a search on applications for babies. Surely someone thought of creating some nifty app to make a mommy’s life easier, right? Well, yes. Enter the Baby Log application for iPhone/iPod Touch by Platinum Coded.
The Baby Log app easily tracks feedings (in minutes, ounces, or milliliters), diaper changes (specify poop or no poop), sleeping, baths, and “other” which you can specify yourself. This is especially helpful for breastfeeding moms (like me) who have a hard time remembering which side they nursed last and it’s great for keeping time while you are nursing. I try to nurse baby around twenty minutes on each side every two hours, so at a glance I can see how much time has elapsed while I am nursing as well as when it’s time for the next feeding. Tracking baby’s sleeping patterns have also been particularly helpful, so that I can guess when her next nap might be based on past trends. I am still concerned about baby’s poop frequency, so tracking that has become easier with the Baby Log as well.
The Baby Log also allows data to be exported to Excel (in comma-delimited format) so you number-crunching types can run your own reports and make your own graphs if you so desire. The application also computes weekly statistics and displays them on the timer screen (not shown).
If you have twins, no problem! Baby Log is twins capable, just shake your iPod/iPhone to switch profiles.
At $4.99, it’s a great deal considering there are gadgets for this exact purpose for upwards of $25.
I am amazed by the technology these days. I’ve always been old-school paper and pencil … which is why love that you can import this into Excel and print it out as well. Thanks for sharing!
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Wow! I don’t have an iPod Touch or iPhone but if I did, this would have come in SO HANDY for the first few weeks. Instead we used a spreadsheet which did the job but sometimes it was hard to reach for the laptop in the wee hours with a fitfully sleeping baby stuck to the boob. I stopped tracking baby’s daily routine around 6 weeks since tracking was driving me crazy and she’d settled into a somewhat predictable pattern by then.
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I wish I had this when I was nursing. It would have been SO beneficial. So with C, we kept track of his schedule for an entire year. You can imagine the stacks of paper we had accumulated! For R, we stopped after a month (second baby syndrome?). LOL. You only need to keep track to make sure the baby is eating enough, but once the schedule/pattern is set, you can pretty much discontinue. But I still record the feeding times for R because sometimes I forget the last time I fed him . . . “is he hungry or just fussy?”
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that’s pretty awesome!
i’ve wondered how you can remember to record the feeding/diapering/etc, i’m all for some recordkeeping of baby activities like baby log but i’m worried it will become an additional burden on me.
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We used ItzBeen which was really helpful. I still use it for diaper changes. This app seems pretty cool. I don’t have an iPhone though.
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ah! I have technology envy! if only I hadn’t ordered a food processor with my saved pennies. (:
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Well, if you don’t have an iPod or iPhone, you can try out the online tool: BabyLoggr.
It’s basic and simple to use. Enjoy.
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