Gone are the days where you drag your child’s baby book into the pediatrician’s office every time (I mean, if you can actually find it that is…or if you are like me, you dig out an old Costo receipt and a lip liner) to mark down your kid’s stats and immunizations.
Now? There’s an app for that, and one for (almost) everything else you might possibly need.
Here are my top apps for new moms. I say “new moms” because I discovered that, after having kid #2, I stopped logging feedings and other…movements after like day 3. With kid #1, I had charts upon graphs upon logs to try and determine a rhyme or reason to the madness, and I imagine most other new moms do as well! Outside of the baby tracking app, the others are ideal for moms at ANY stage.
BabyNursing– free; upgrade to premium for $4.99 for all categories, or $1.99 a la carte per category
Yes, this app is for the OCD mom in all of us.
If you are nursing and it is your first time, I would say this app is a must have. It is both easy to use and easy to comprehend the entered info.
How it works
Nursing- Tap the side you are going to start nursing, and the timer starts. You can pause the timer, stop it and switch sides, etc… and it logs everything for you. It then keeps a running tally of # of feedings, average length of feedings and minutes total for the day. It literally cannot get any easier to remember what side you nursed on at 3am, and when the pediatrician asks how long your baby nurses on average, you have a pretty good idea.
Upgrades
- Bottle: Track feedings of formula, breast milk, juices, or anything else.
- Diaper: Follow your baby’s diaper use — dry, wet, BM or both.
- Pumping: Track how often you’re pumping and how much.
- Sleeping: Keep track of how much your baby naps, and how many hours Baby sleeps during the night.
- Solids: Track your baby’s eating routine with our comprehensive
food list. There’s even an intelligent “Recent” meal list to speed up
selections. - Doctor Visits: Take notes on key points from your baby’s doctor visits.
- Medication: Keep track of the dosage and frequency of your baby’s
medication, and get reminders when it’s time for Baby’s next dose. - Vaccinations: Mark off the vaccinations your baby has received, and get a reminder when it’s time for your baby’s next vaccine. I think THIS is the best part of the app- you select the country you reside in, and it autofills the recommended vaccinations. All you have to do is check whether you vaccinated or ignored the vaccination schedule. Perfect. You now have all your child’s data on hand at all times, and can even export it in the form of an e-mail.
MyShoebox– free with 30 day Pro trial; Pro upgrade for $5/month for full resolution backup or $48/year
So…with my first child, I was sleep deprived. Wait, that is like saying Miley Cyrus is a little out of control. I was like a freaking freight train, headed straight into the absolute consuming disaster that is the pit of despairing sleep deprivation/insomnia. How does this play into this app, you ask? Well, I was so sleep deprived that I put my phone (complete with all the pictures of my newborn on it) into the washing machine less than a week after she was born. Yep, lost ’em all. Right after my husband dropped his phone and destroyed it. So we ended up with a very small amount of photos of our bundle of joy.
How it works
Download the app. Open it (and keep it open, best to keep it charging too) and it automatically transfers ALL of your photos (mine numbered in the thousands) to a cloud. The free version backs everything up at a resolution of 1024 pixels; premium backs up at full resolution. You can then access your photos from another device OR online. It also organizes them for you and even e-mails you a “on this day 1 year ago” photos, which is kinda cool.
Upgrades
Pro Plan includes full resolution storage of JPEG and PNG images. Cost is $5/month or $48/year.
Camera+–$1.99
As a mom, you soon realize when it comes time to putting together your holiday card that you have exactly 1 photo of you and your child. The one that was taken when they were born, and ya probably don’t look all that hot. I use Camera+ because it has a self timer on it, so I can take a photo with ME IN IT. Yes, believe it or not, you can actually get in a photo or take a…WHOLE FAMILY PHOTO. (Also, if you are pregnant, check out this awesome tutorial on taking a maternity silhouette with this app).
There are a ton of super cool features, lenses, etc…but I bought it for the self-timer.
Afterlight– $.99
Babies are expensive. New homes are expensive. Late night amazon.com binges are expensive. I have had a part in all three of these recently, and also realized that baby photo shoots are REALLY expensive. I’m tapped out. Yes, I want to document my child’s early days. No, I can’t drop five grand on it. I decided to give it a try and you know what? I didn’t do such a bad job…with the help of Afterlight. ANY photo looks better when a super cool awesome filter is applied.
Try your hand at taking some fun candid photos of your baby. Not saying replace the baby photo shoot you have planned (because many professional photographers are absolutely amazing), but see what you come up with. You might surprise yourself, and this app is easy to operate.
30Second Mom– free
Full disclosure- I work for this site. Even more full disclosure- I would use the app even if I didn’t.
I was at my pediatrician’s office at my baby’s first appointment and was asking her a few general questions, some neurotic, some trivial. She looked at me with narrowed eyes and told me she would fire me as a patient if I Googled info on questions like these instead of calling her. I laughed, and said no, I was past the up-all-night-in-a-panic-Google-sessions (almost truth) and that I actually had credible parenting resources at my disposal. I told her about 30Second Mom and she was truly impressed.
30Second Mom has over a hundred contributors, including a leading postpartum depression specialist, Loyola physicians, a speech language pathologist, a pediatric dietitian, and more. Bottom line- the information on this site is trustworthy- it isn’t some quack in a chat room spouting misinformation.
Best of all? You can get info on everything from toddler feeding tips to new mom fashions. Not all baby poop and puke, a dash of everything in real moms’ lives.
