Parenting Product I'm Loving - Baby ESP

OMG there's an app for that!!!

I'm not one to buy apps, I prefer the free selections, but this one rocks hard so we paid to have it on both of our phones.  It's Baby ESP and it's saving our butts!

It started with my pain medication and pumping schedule.  My pumping was every 2-3 hours and my meds were every 4 hours.  I couldn't flippin keep track of why I made a mental note of 2pm, was that my last pump or my last dose of meds?  I nearly overdosed a few times because I simply couldn't remember.  This app allowed me to set up a reminder for each of those things, and it charts when you last did everything so you don't mess it up.

On the pumping, it tracks each breast, how much time you spend pumping it (I do both at the same time), and how much each breast yields in each pump.  You can look at charts and statistics over time to see if your production is increasing well and how much you get per pump on average.  Every thing you enter also has a notes section.  Today I got a really good amount and I put in the notes "drank a ton of water between pumpings".

If nothing else, just the journal section of this app is worth it.  While in the nicu, I was able to jot down a few thoughts (which you can pretty much read in my NICU Progress post) and even has a button for "daily photo".  No time to do anything like a baby book right now so this is kind of keeping track of my thoughts and "stuff" that I might find sentimental in the future is going into a bucket to be sorted later.


Then Christina came home. We are able to track diaper changes, feedings, sleep, etc etc.  I can't count how many times we refer to the app to figure out when we can expect a baby to wake up and be hungry again.  Yes, you seriously do forget whether the baby fell asleep 1 or 2 hours ago.  


So we got into a lovely habit of tracking everything baby before Charlotte came home.  With 2, having a way of keeping track is just phenomenal.  So when the doctor asks us "how much are they eating?" and my brain is going "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", we can look it up.  


Honestly, if I had a full term, standard newborn, I probably wouldn't worry so much about these details.  I'm not one to be totally anal retentive.  But when you have itty bitty preemies, you really do have to keep track of exactly how much they are eating and other such details.  You don't have the luxury of allowing them to lose a little weight here and there as they figure things out.  Wanna know how anal retentive I've gotten?  We bought a baby scale so that when I try to nurse (we're working on it), I can weigh the baby before and after to get an idea of how much they actually took in so I know approximately how much bottle to give them before they sleep again.  Yeah, I know.  First time mom overboard.  But we also have cats with weight issues so we have another use for the scale once this initial preemie stage of baby care is over and done.


Back to the app.  The other great thing - it syncs between phones.  During a wake cycle, I'll track one, he'll track the other, and before long both of our phones have all of the info.  It's not all on one person to do all the tracking.


The app is about $5, but you have to repurchase it for every device you put it on.  We each have it on our phones and consider it among the best $10 we ever spent.