The iPhone Mommy: A Guest Post

By Rachel

The adjustment, sleeplessness, and busyness of being a new Mom can really take up a majority of one’s mental processing space, and then when you add to that trying to keep up with feedings, diapers, naps, and every other event in your baby’s life that you must control and time, it’s nearly impossible.

With my first child, I kept a ridiculously detailed and arduous notebook about everything related to her well-being.  Although it took quite a bit of effort to keep up with, I don’t know that I could have survived without it – at least without my daughter being fed hours too late because I lost track of when she last ate.

However, now that I have an iPhone for my second baby, my Mommy world is unbelievably streamlined and more efficient.  Thanks to the Total Baby App, I can track everything easily – with the click of a button.  It has start/stop timers for feedings, naps, and other items, as well as diaper trackers, doctor visit trackers, and growth stat trackers.  And then, based on my easily entered data, it gives me a beautiful summary of when all activities were last performed, as well as a log of my baby’s daily events:

 
At $4.99, this is one of the most expensive Apps I’ve ever bought, but I am CERTAIN that it is the most useful app I own – it even has a spot in my iPhone’s exclusive lower tray, because I open it more than anything else.

You can also keep a diary and keep track of milestones through the app, although I haven’t used those features yet.  But one of my favorite features is that it has the official growth charts loaded into the program, so you can see where your child falls in the growth percentiles every time he/she is measured:


Other features include being able to track multiple children (including a special dual-entry system for twins), the ability to export selected or all data and email it (presumably to your Pediatrician, although I think that amount of detailed recordkeeping just *MIGHT* scare them a bit), and a syncing interface so that you can share information with another phone (so that you could share the program with a caregiver, or perhaps if one’s husband wanted to know the exact contents of his baby’s diapers at any particular time in the day).

Speaking of which, the descriptions available DO get a bit more…detailed than most people would want to remember:



But luckily, you’re not required to fill in all of the descriptions – I certainly don’t.
This app has made it so much easier for me to know exactly where I am in the care of my baby, regardless of whether I’m at home or not.  I now can’t imagine how exactly I raised a baby without it, but I suppose it IS still possible. 

…The only thing that would make this app more fun is if it visually started showing you the state of your child.  For instance, as you went too many days without bathing them, the screen would start to get a dirtier each day…and if you hadn’t changed their diaper in a few hours, the screen would…well, you get the point.

Rachel is a blogger in Birmingham, Alabama.  She primarily blogs at Grasping for Objectivity in my Subjective Life and Alabama Bloggers.