While I am out of the “infant years” here in my home, I most certainly remember those days vividly. I don’t think any mother will forget those wonderfully sweet, but also tiring-to-the-core days and nights of feeding, changing, sleeping schedules that needed to be constantly managed and possibly tweaked. In our nursery, a spiral notebook was the journal of choice to keep notes about breastfeeding timing and duration, sleeping patterns, and even somewhat overly descriptive tales of diaper contents.
With our first child, we were just trying to “figure out” this new baby thing and knew that keeping notes and finding a pattern would help us start to predict behaviors and needs. But, with our second child, the journaling was just as critical as the first time, as we needed the feeding details for a myriad of breastfeeding issues as well as significant reflux problems that our daughter was experiencing. Once we got our daughter’s reflux issues managed, we now had a new problem to tackle…. sleep. She was used to sleeping in her bouncy seat, her car seat, or in someone’s arms to keep her upright. Now that she didn’t need that, we needed to establish a new sleep pattern with her and our sleep timing and duration journaling really helped us get through that transition easier.
So, yeah, did the spiral notebook help? Sure it did. Was it a pain? Sure it was. I needed to do math calculations and extrapolate trends. It was more than my weary brain could do on very little sleep and in a new-mom fog.
Enter the Similac Strong Moms Baby Journal! This is a FREE app available for the iPhone that I’ve had the opportunity to test out this week and I have one word for it: JEALOUS! I am so jealous that this wasn’t around when my babies were little.
Here are some of my favorite features of this app. First, it is so easy to use. There are really easy one-click or slide buttons to use for data entry. Instead of entering a bunch of numbers, they have a great timer feature where you can click one button to start the clock when baby starts feeding (or sleeping, etc) and tap it when they are done. This is especially important when you are trying to do something with an infant in one hand/arm and you can easily use your iPhone in the other hand!
Second, I found the app to track all of the really useful information, and nothing else. There is nothing worse than asking a new mom to track extraneous information, just because the software can do it. Similac has really thought hard about what information is critical to capture in 3 important areas: 1. Feeding (both breastfeeding and bottle feeding are well covered) 2. Sleeping and 3. Diaper Changing.
Third, this app has great trending graphs. In time, you can visually start to see trends emerging with your child…. this is supremely important information both for predicting behaviors in your infant, but also for correcting patterns as well.
And, finally, there is this super simple email feature, where you click one button and you can send an email to a spouse, caretaker, or even the pediatrician with an update on your child.
Although this is a Similac application, there is no mention of the brand’s formula or a preference towards formula feeding anywhere in this application. It is just a great, well-rounded app for all parents of infants that I would say should be on your must-download list. And, it is FREE! Go here to download it today.
*I was compensated for my time in reviewing this product by Collective Bias. As always, my opinions are strictly my own. I’ll always tell you the real deal.
Philaburban Mom 