We thought we'd share the apps that helped up through our journey from conceiving, to the delivery and beyond.
Conceiving to Pregnancy
Most of the ladies around me already have this app as a period and/or ovulation tracker which are 2 great functions. In case you don't already know, flow can also be used to track how far along you are in your pregnancy. Just by keying in your EDD in the settings page, the app changes its default mode into a pregnancy tracker, showing you what baby looks like from week to week. I've never paid for the full version and it has been good enough for me. Flo even has a forum where you can post (and read) anonymously about all things women. When you're done being pregnant, tell flo and the app switches back into "period mode".
When I was pregnant, my appetite for baby information was insatiable! I wanted to read as much about pregnancy as possible, and was always searching to see if there was any more I could find out about what is happening with baby on a daily basis. This app is free and even has resources like articles specific to your gestation period.
If the 2 above aren't enough, here's one more I really enjoyed. Ovia has cute little functions like choosing to view the current size of your baby in the form of a fruit or animal, or the size of your bub's hand and foot in comparison to your phone screen. I found this so comforting especially when I was growing increasingly impatient to meet mwb. Of course, this app is free.
Delivery
Throughout the pregnancy, like most soon-to-be moms I would think, I was most nervous about D-day. I made sure I memorised the 5-1-1 rule and nagged at my husband enough that he knew it too. The truth is, there are so many apps out there that do exactly that for you. Of course some pregnancy apps already have that function so you don't need to worry about downloading yet another app. But for us and our nerves, we needed an app that had only one function and we ended up downloading 4 of those (between the two of us). All of them were free and served the exact same function with different designs. The one we ended up using? Contraction Timer & Counter 9m And for no particular reason except that we liked how it looked which resulted in the app feeling like the "easiest" to use.
I would like to just add in here that the 5-1-1 did not work for us at all. But that is another story for another day.
Postpartum
Looking after the baby ourselves meant shift work. We found ourselves waking each other from naps or shouting across the house to find out when mwb was last changed or fed. We needed a solution and I went through a couple of apps before finally settling on Babytime. The free version has sufficient functions and we've used it from the first week baby came home with us to this day. I cannot stop raving about this app. It has helped us in so many ways, it needs to be listed.
-
You can add multiple carers on the app and you'll all be synced on your own phones.
-
Each user can customise their "quick buttons" on their own app so daddy's phone doesn't even have to have the breastfeeding button, and mommy's phone doesn't have to have the nappy change button (heh)
-
You can track how long you are nursing on each boob, how much your bub is drinking from the bottle, how often, if the nappy is a poo or a pee, how long and how much you've pumped and how long each nap is. The app also recognises night and day and automatically registers a nap as sleep when it's nighttime. You can even track medication if you're feeding baby any. When you're in that new parent zombie mode, you could so easily make mistakes.
-
There are analysis pages which shows you how often baby does what, so you can immediately recognise if there's a routine which made our lives as new parents that much easier.
As mwb got older, we didn't use the app as much. Still, I used it to remind me when she ate and when it was time to pump. The app sends you an alert when baby is hungry. You can even choose how hungry baby should be before you get the alert.
We've downloaded and tried so many apps and these were the ones that stuck out. I'm sure there are so many more out there and some that might be better but the above really worked for us and if you're looking, we're hope these suggestions might help you out too!
Want to share another really useful app? For any feedback, topic suggestions or questions, drop us a message at hello@thewildbub.com