My Busy Baby iPhone App Now Available

To keep the new parents out there up to date on the baby iphone app from learning my baby, we just uploaded version .2 and it is now available on itunes app store. This new version of My Busy Baby App that we've been working on will have all the same features to help track your new born's nursing and sleeping schedule, how many and when you're changing diapers, pediatricians appointments and medications, while operating a bit smoother and it will remain a 99 cent iphone app. The first version of the My Busy Baby App was just released on itunes a couple weeks ago and we eager to hear back from our users with any feedback. SOO if you have a new born to take care for, of course we recommend spending the dollar to help new parents or expecting parents keep your brains just a bit less scattered.

My Busy Baby App makes a great baby shower gift for iphone users it is also very easy to give, just email the Baby App to them, start by clicking the link, Email My Busy Baby, click on blue button that reads "view in itunes" and underneath the logo where is reads "$0.99 buy app" hit the down arrow and select "gift this app" and itunes will lead you threw the rest!

Logo For The Busy Baby App

Wanted to share the new logo with the Blogging world! Hope some of you can find this baby iphone App useful, Cheers!

Find the direct link to the app in itunes at www.learningmybaby.com

My Busy Baby iPhone App Functions

After having explained my motivations for wanting to develop an application that made life easier for new parents in the last blog, I wanted to take some time to be more specific about what the application will do when it's available. I'm going to tell you about my favorite feature first: night mode.

Night mode is going to be, in my opinion, one of the best aspects of having this app. Turn on the screen of your phone and immediately have the option of hitting one button (okay, sometimes two or three, but that's the most) and what your baby was doing at three in the morning is recorded. When you're lucid again the next day, you can go back and look at whether you fed your baby twice on one breast by accident, whether he was up every hour and a half or two hours to eat, whether he was wet or poopy, or how long your baby was awake when he decided play time started at three in the morning. Nights all blurred together for me after a while, and although it wasn't really critical to know whether or not the diaper I changed last night was wet or poopy, when my son didn't poop for almost a week I wished I had been able to remember which late night it was exactly that I had changed that diaper; when my left breast decreased its milk production by a noticeable amount, it would have been nice to know how long I had been favoring my right breast in the middle of the night. So, night mode will be easy, even in a sleep deprived, exhaustive state. When the screen comes up, there will be three main buttons, the feeding buttons: left, right, and bottle. Once you hit the left or right button, you're done; it's that simple. If you hit the bottle button, you'll have the option to put in the number of ounces or you can add that information in later. When you hit the diaper button, you can input whether the diaper is wet or poopy, or skip it. The awake button at the bottom keeps track of how long the little one is awake before allowing you some more sleep. I wanted it to be as clean and effortless as was possible.

My original idea was to have an application specifically for keeping track of what a baby did at night; but once you start thinking about how much easier things would be to keep an eye on if you could do it on your phone, there are a lot of things that go into taking care of a baby during the day that could be made simpler as well. And thus, it became clear that the application needed to be more comprehensive. It's definitely more convenient to know how long your baby is napping every day and how often, how long it has been since they last ate, whether or not they're due for medicine, etc. There's also a nice function that helps breast feeding (and thus inevitably, pumping) moms keep track of how often they're pumping, and how much they're producing during those pumps. There's a button that tells you when the next pediatrician appointment is, and an alarm to remind you a day or so beforehand. Everything in day mode is important not because it isn't possible to keep track of it in other ways, but because having everything in one place, available at all times, is so much more ideal. It allows busy parents to keep track of things without having to wrack their brains every time they need to recall something. If both parents have the app, they can check on when the last diaper change was without necessarily having to ask their significant other (who I imagine for this scenario, is getting a nap).

I'm including pictures of the early mock-ups for the application here. They're not the finished product, but as someone who often learns more effectively through visual aids, I thought it would be nice if I included them. That way what I'm trying to describe means a little more; you get an idea of the form and the function.

Busy Baby iPhone App Intro

There's certainly no lack of information available to new parents anymore. Any and all resources, studies, opinions, and helpful tips are accessible at the touch of a finger. There aren't any questions that aren't answerable within moments as long as you're within reach of your phone or computer. Everything has become streamlined, simpler... well, almost everything.

When I left the hospital after having my son, they gave me a book (actually, they let me have two, after I told them how much I really wanted to keep track of everything) in which I could record his diaper changes, feedings and sleep schedule. It was basically just an unorganized spread sheet for me to write on. I did the best I could with it, but there was no way for me to ensure that in the middle of the night, when my son woke up hungry, that I was going to have that booklet next to me, much less a pen, much less the clarity of mind to write down the exact times in which he had started and finished eating. I managed to keep up with it for the better part of two weeks, but there were too many other things going on to remember that on top of everything else. After I stopped, I realized I no longer had much of an idea at all of how many times he was eating night to night, and even had a difficult time keeping track of which breast I had fed him with last during the early morning hours. But I wasn't willing to start using the booklet again (I only had a few pages left available anyhow), and I couldn't find any other means of keeping track that I would actually use at three in the morning.

I got a smart phone when my son was three months old, and had the opportunity of playing with applications for the first time. Within the first week or so of having the phone, I started searching for some sort of baby application that would allow me to input my son's information as I went. I almost always have my phone within arms reach, and I thought finally I might have found a simple way to track when he was eating, sleeping, awake at odd hours, poopy, wet, etc. And yet, there was nothing. Nothing that was going to be easy for me to use, nothing that was any better than using that booklet from the hospital. A few weeks later, I made a comment out loud about how much I wished that I had the ability to hit a button on my phone - and not have to do anything else - and I could keep track of when I was feeding, changing, and staying up for three hours in the middle of the night with my baby; from that comment, this blog and this application were born.

I just want things to be easier, without having to sacrifice more of my precious moments of sleep; I think that's what all new (or even more experienced) parents want. That being said, once I had the idea, I couldn't stop thinking of other things that could be included to make it a one stop, make-your-life-less-complicated concept. Wouldn't it be neat if I could compare my son's information to other babies' information that were the same age as he? Is every baby sleeping this sporadically? Does every baby eat this much? How does he compare? Now, I know that all babies are unique, and my son can't always fit into the majority; but, I think most babies are pretty similar in their development. I just think that its hard to know enough babies personally to give yourself a good idea of where your baby is compared to other babies his/her age. Maybe I'm just a really nosy, curious mom, but I have a suspicion that we're all pretty nosy and curious, whether we want/mean to be or not. My hope is that this application and website make things incredibly more simple, as well as more informative. I sincerely hope that everyone truly is able to utilize and enjoy everything that this application provides. As much as I wish I'd been able to use it ten months ago, I'm looking forward to using it as much as I can now, and secretly am looking forward to using it with the next little one, down the road.