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These apps can help you track your breastfeeding and provide support for lactation.
Are you new to parenting? These apps can make parenting easier. Oscar Wong photo, courtesy Getty Images
“I’m New at This” is Be Well Philly’s biweekly series for new and soon-to-be parents. This educational resource covers the ins and outs of prepping for the arrival of a little one and taking care of them — and yourself — with insight and advice from local experts. Tips featured in “I’m New at This” are recommendations, and we believe in pursuing methods and approaches that work best for your unique family. Have a question you’d like to see answered? Email Be Well editor Laura Brzyski at [email protected]
After 34 hours of labor, and an unplanned C section last March, Penn Hospital was my home. I needed a vacation. Instead, it was time for me to get back to work, taking care of my darling newborn, 10 lb. 7 oz. newborn. Fortunately, the answer to keeping my sanity was at my fingertips — in the App Store.
I asked some other local parents for their favorite new-parent apps — because sharing is caring (and life-saving!). Here are 10 suggestions from Philly dads.
Preparing for baby’s arrival
Franchesca Isaac, Alma Acupuncture’s owner in Fishtown, and mom to a six year-old and one month-old, said What to Expect During her recent pregnancy, it was her favourite app. “I loved to keep up-to-date with each week of pregnancy and joined my pregnancy month forum for the virtual community,” she says. What to Expect also features an ovulation calculator, a development tracker (so you can see what fruit your baby’s size should be akin to), information about your changing body, and a due date countdown.
Davida Janae is a local fashion and lifestyle expert (@vidafashionista). Ovia Pregnancy This was especially true during the past 38 weeks. She is currently expecting her second child. “Along with the app giving you details about your growing body and baby, you can track many things like your mood, symptoms, and blood pressure, write notes to yourself or to baby, add doctors appointments, set reminders, and more,” she says.
To track everything after the baby arrives
Feedings, diaper changes, sleep — there’s a lot to keep track of, which can be particularly challenging in those overwhelming early days.
“My husband and I realized we could use help tracking while at the doctor’s office when we’d have completely different answers to the question, ‘How many wet diapers a day?’” says Point Breeze resident and mom of a 21-month-old Marie DiFeliciantonio, who recommends Huckleberry. “We couldn’t remember at all. Later, it was useful in sleep training. It was discovered that our son slept for between 3-4 hours and 4 hours after waking up in the morning. We could then mark the time and set alarms, if needed. Also, we could give the login to anyone helping to take care of our son for any period of time, so we’d know how his day went and still be able to get him to bed according to his ‘wake window.’”
Casey Watson lives in East Passyunk, and is the new dad of an eight-month old. He is also partial to Baby Tracker. “For me, the hardest thing to find was an app that tracked things like sleep, feeding, pumping, etc., but that was not trying to get you to read a million advice articles. There are plenty of good resources for content like that, but it seems like most of the ‘baby tracking’ apps are actually there to get you to read content first and the tracking stuff is just tacked on,” he says. “I eventually found one that had a good tracking function and didn’t try to push any other newsletters or blogs. Design-wise, Baby Tracker is way behind the others, but the functionality is really good.”
Personally (although I admittedly didn’t experiment with any others) I’ve loved Nara Baby Tracker You can record diaper changes and feedings. My husband and I can both access it from our phones, log every feeding and diaper change, and see the history and trends of our baby’s activity to know if anything abnormal is going on. The tool was highly recommended by our experienced postpartum doula.
For sleep help
The Hatch The app lets you change the sound and light levels from your smartphone. “It helps us differentiate reasons we’re in the nursery, and helps baby make those connections to sounds/colors,” says Jordan Price, Fishtown resident, mom to a three-month-old, and food and fitness influencer (@foodsweatnbeers). “A green light plus birds means it’s time to wake up. Red light plus TV noises signal it’s time for sleep. Dim orange/yellow and a lullaby means post-bath, bedtime feed and book.”
I’m also a fan of the Hatch “Rest” device and believe it’s part of the reason (aside from sheer good luck) that my baby sleeps through the night.
For milestone questions
Whenever our baby has been unexpectedly fussy the past few months, my husband BJ reminds me that she’s in a ‘leap,’ a term we learned from the app The Wonder Weeks. You simply plug in your child’s birthday, and it tells you what to expect from their behavior by week. It’s certainly alleviated a lot of anxiety and built our confidence as first-time parents with no frame of reference. BJ connects the app with his calendar and receives alerts when our daughter enters a new stage.
DiFeliciantonio agrees, saying the app “gave us some reassurance that our son was progressing and there wasn’t some other issue bubbling under the surface that he couldn’t tell us about. It explained every step he made in terms of brain development and skills. No kid is ‘by the book’ but it was nice to have a general idea of what was happening with him.”
For lactation support
The price is the best Pacify app, noting that it’s free through the city. “When I had a serious case of mastitis, it was great to have an on-demand resource with tips to reduce pain/engorgement [and] ideas of how to reduce it in the future,” she says. This app connects parents to a network that includes doulas, registered nurses, and lactation consultants who can provide virtual support.
Mari Silber, Queen Village-based Pilates & TRX studio The Balance Room, and mom to a 4-month-old daughter, uses The Balance Room. Elvie wireless pump. The accompanying app, she says, “is super helpful in tracking how much I’m pumping, and saves all of my metrics in case I want to track the progression of my milk supply.”
Find community
When I’m on Facebook these days, it’s usually to check out the city-and-neighborhood-specific groups that have been surprisingly helpful when it comes to parenting in Philly. Props to the “Babysitters Club of Philadelphia” and “South Silly Parents” groups on Facebook Thank you for finding me the perfect nanny and giving honest reviews of local daycares. And when the height of the formula shortage was happening, parents in the “Philadelphia Formula Find & Exchange” group helped each other out by posting where they were finding formula and offering to pick up specific brands that other parents might need.
