Being a new parent is perhaps one of the most exhilarating yet stressful times of your life. I remember feeling consumed by love for my beautiful baby girl and completely overwhelmed with feelings of fear and inadequacy all at the same time. In the days that follow the birth, your sleep-deprived mind tries to remember everything you have read and been told about taking care of a newborn. You get oodles of advice from well-meaning friends and family that often just complicates matters. Add in the fact that you still have to take care of yourself and your family and you have what could easily become the recipe for a total mommy meltdown! What I would have given to have an app like Baby by Smallnest to help me through those first few months! This easy-to-use app was obviously designed with new mommies in mind!
Baby by Smallnest was designed by a team of moms and dads who wanted to create a “baby brain”-proof method of tracking your baby’s eating, sleeping and diapering habits. With a few taps on your iPhone, you can record what your baby’s most recent meal. Choices include: Bottle or Food, Left Breast and Right Breast. You can record how much formula your baby ate, what kind of solid foods they ate and how much, or how long they were breastfeeding. There is an area to add in your own notes as well if there was something you needed to remember, like maybe a question for your pediatrician. You can also time when you start and stop pumping and how much you pumped.
This app also helps you track your baby’s sleeping patterns. When your little one dozes off, simply tap the sleep button to begin timing them and tap it again when they wake up. The length and time of the nap will be calculated and recorded for you! Whenever you change a diaper, you can also record whether the diaper was peed, pooped or both as well as what time you changed them. Other helpful features of this app include the ability to set up an individualized profile for your baby with a picture, their name, birthday, gender and blood type. I can imagine that this feature would be particularly helpful if you have twins or other multiples.
I’ve saved what I think are the two best features for last! First, you can share your baby’s patterns with others by “Adding them to your nest.” Basically, this means that you add them as a contact into your phone (if they aren’t already) and with a touch of a button they are sent information and summaries about your baby’s patterns for that day. This would be such an amazing tool for working moms who leave their baby with a babysitter or nanny. A mom would not have to remember to fill-in the caregiver every morning and the mom could see what her baby has been doing throughout the day while they are apart! Also, for an additional $9.99 you can purchase an in-app 3-month subscription to the Timeline feature. The Timeline shows you comparisons day-by-day of when your baby ate, slept and needed diapered. This makes it so easy for new parents to spot patterns in their baby’s behaviors to help them establish better sleeping or feeding habits or perhaps plan when the best times would be to travel or run errands.
Baby by Smallnest is truly an ingenious app. I wish I would have had it when I had babies of my own. I was so impressed by it, that I have already suggested it to several of my friends who have new babies and they all seemed very excited to give it a try! If you are a new mom, know a new mom, or are a new mom-to-be save yourself some stress and let Baby by Smallnest alleviate some of your load. Anything you can to make life easier is definitely worth it and this app will without a doubt make your life a whole lot easier!
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.