Baby Feed Tracker Plus iPhone review
As frequent visitors to this site know, I have four kids close together in age. For my family to function well we quickly realized that we needed to be very scheduled with our kids. From the time my oldest was 3 months old, we would strictly schedule all naps and bedtimes. We continued this with our subsequent children as well even though I nursed them on demand.
With our oldest, I kept a spiral notebook full of her daily schedule – wake up, breastfeed, diaper, nap, play, breastfeed, diaper, nap, etc. We went through the entire notebook! But in those hazy, sleep deprived days when my husband would ask “didn’t you just nurse her?” I could hand him the notebook. And chances are, yes I just nursed her because that is what newborns love to do! Not too much else going on for them…
Of course, that was way back in the pre-iPhone days. Now with apps like Baby Feed Tracker Plus, there is no need to write anything down anymore. With the press of a button you can record breastfeeding, bottle feed, diaper change, nap and expression (breast milk). Each mode also has an option to include notes.
- Breast feed lets you record time as you are nursing by pressing start and stop or you can enter a total duration if you are recording a previous nursing session (you can change the time and date on the log to create an accurate record). You can record nursing on either side though you do have to stop and save one side before you can successfully record nursing on the other side even if it is in the middle of the same feed.
- Bottle feeding was recently updated to allow you to switch from mls to ounces in settings. In this mode you can also record time as you are feeding or manually input the amount of time the feeding took.
Diaper change allows you to record diapers that are wet, dirty or both. Again, you can add notes and record previous diapers by changing the date and time. It would be great to be able to record this while timing naps or feeding sessions for those parents able to multitask!- Nap allows you to press start and stop to record a nap as it is taking place or allows you to change the date and time and record a previous nap.
- Expression allows you to keep track of how much milk you have pumped, from which side and at what time.
Baby Feed Tracker Plus gives you a chronological log of your baby’s recorded activities which is great for new parents. I would like to see the option to view this in a timeline format (i.e. baby nursed from 9am – 9:15am , baby napped from 10am – 12pm) rather than the current format of baby nursed 5 hours ago for 20 minutes, baby slept 3 hours ago.
In the stats section you can keep track of total diapers, naps, feeds etc. along with many more stats, in a daily, weekly or monthly view. You might find it interesting to see how much sleep your baby is getting in a 24 hour period even though it might not seem like a lot to you!
In settings, you can name your baby, choose between mls and oz for bottle feeding and set auto reminders for feeding and naptime. This is the one part of the app I had trouble with. Naptime works fine. You can keep the nap interval that the app comes with or turn auto off and input your own (one hour for new babies!) and when your baby has been up for that amount of time, the app will remind you that it is time to put the baby down for a nap. However, if you record a 5 minute nap, the next nap reminder will still be an hour away even though that 5 minute nap should not be counted as a nap. My advice is delete the short little naps that you may accidently record when you press start on the nap function and then baby starts crying a few short minutes later. Try the nap again until you get at least 30 minutes!
The Feed Time reminder gave me the most trouble in this app. When auto is off and you input your own duration (duration between feeds that is, not duration of feeds!), the reminder system works well. If you inputted a feed that ended at 12:00 and you want your next to be in 2 hours, you would get a reminder at 2:00. Just a reminder, if you are nursing, then you start counting time between feeds from the beginning of your nursing session, not the end like this app does. So the manual reminder would not be accurate for you.
The more confusing part for me was the auto feature for feed. I could find no rhyme or reason for the intervals the app would decide between feeds, and it would be constantly changing.
Overall, I feel this app would be a great tool for new parents trying to keep track of their baby’s habits. I would have loved seeing everything my baby was doing on one screen. Great tool for pediatrician visits too – when the doctor asks about baby’s sleep and eating patterns and you are too tired to remember, just refer back to the stats. I would recommend staying away from the auto reminders for now, but the manual reminders do work as they are supposed to. Baby Feed Tracker was just updated to include the ability to email your logs which is great to keep a working parent involved. Finally, the developers of Baby Feed Tracker really seemed to read the reviews in iTunes and updated the app based on reviewers’ comments. Given the great features the app already contains, I think that any issues can and will be worked out by the responsive Baby Feed Tracker Plus team.
Price when Reviewed: $1.99
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
Seller: Infinite Touch
