As a self-proclaimed early adopter and technology geek, one of my first moves when I learned my wife was pregnant was to scour the Apple App Store to find apps for new parents that will help them and their babies.
I use each of these helpful parenting apps below almost daily, except for Full Term – an extremely helpful app for expecting moms and dads in the final days of pregnancy, but one I never used after that.
Baby Connect ($4.99)
Baby Connect makes recording and tracking key information about your child, especially in the first six months of life, very easy. This parent-friendly app allows you to enter daily information about feeding, diapers, sleep, mood, activities, medicines and more. It even lets you snap and save daily photos though I have not used it for that myself.
Tracking your baby’s every activity may seem like overkill, but it is immensely helpful when trying to figure out why she may be fussy, to see if she is getting enough sleep/food on daily and weekly basis, or if the amount of diapers is showing healthy development. The results can also be shared with your pediatrician for assessment, which we found very helpful as well.
Baby Connect allows you to authorize several users (such as parents, daycare staff and nannies) for each child. All entries are immediately and securely synchronized on each user account. This feature proved key as my wife and I both use the app to enter our youngest daughter’s information.
Full Term – Labor Contraction Timer (99 cents)
For all dads awaiting the birth of their child, I highly recommend Full Term.
This is the easiest-to-use of the apps for new parents to be lets you time and record contractions – an important thing in the final stressful hours prior to baby’s birth. It is a simple as pressing stop/start on the app timer, and gives you duration and frequency of contractions for last contraction, last hour and last six hours – critical information in making the decision on when to call the doctor or go to the hospital.
Baby Shusher ($4.99)
This simple yet fun Baby Shusher apps for new parents will help you keep your mouth from drying up while trying to soothe and quiet your baby.
Open the app, press “start” and a familiar “shushing’”white noise emanates from your phone. Helpful on the go and for naps, but not really a replacement for a white noise machine for night sleep.
PingMD (free)
PingMD may be the game-changing medical app for the relationship between doctor and patient, and perfect for the parent who worries about every little health issue involving his or her child and ends up scheduling doctor appointments that result in lost time and additional cost.
This simple healthcare app allows simple, fast and effective communication between you and your doctor, and all it requires is a user profile for the patient. You can send and receive ‘pings’ (notifications) between you and your doctor during and after office hours on any subject related to your child’s health. These pings can include a picture or video along with your message.
We actually chose our pediatrician partially based on the fact that she was a PingMD pilot doctor. We have sent probably up to 10 pings to our pediatrician with questions related to sleep, diet and rashes (with pictures) and the quick answers we received gave us peace of mind while saving us several trips to the doctor’s office.
1 Second Everyday (99 cents)
A must-have for those parents who want to keep those precious early life memories alive as long as possible,. This is probably my photo/video app and one I think my youngest daughter will be most happy about in the future.
You create a video from a collection of one-second snippets recorded from each day of your baby’s life. The results are simply stunning and we are planning to use it at least for a year to later show Gracie how much she has changed in her first year of life. We are in our fourth month now and watching the video is just so much fun!
Intuitive and easy to use, the app lets you take your video using it or a generic phone camera application. The app will recognize the video based on the time stamp and allow you to choose your one second from a recorded longer clip. It then goes ahead and adds it to the other seconds you already chose in chronological order.
You can see the video that inspired me to use this app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtgzTr8iopk
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Konstanty Owczarek is a finance professional residing in Manhattan. He moved to New York City 10 years ago and is originally from Poland. He researches apps for new parents for fun and practicality.
He is married to his lovely wife Suzi and they have a 5-month old daughter Gracie Zosia.
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