The other day when I raved about breastfeeding cookies, I was disappointed that nobody wanted to see a graph of my pumping output. Sure, it’s not very scientific because my data doesn’t control for hydration, time since last nursing, or other foods… but that’s what a tracking mom lives for: being able to answer inane questions at the drop of a hat.
Well, here ya go!
You’re welcome.
My friend, and fellow Industrial Engineer, Rachel knows, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Though I can’t manage my children in this sort of way, I am addicted to trying. I want to be able to accurately answer these questions (without the constraints of new mommy brain) even though I can’t:
- When did he start sleeping through the night? I don’t know.
- When did he drop his third nap? I’m not sure this baby has one.
- When did he start eating three solid meals a day? Hmmm. Don’t know.
Holden was first born, RookieDad Alec and I made notes about his feedings and sleeping schedule. Not satisfied with what the hospital provided, we invented our own paper-based spreadsheet. I looked for patterns. The baby was so darn fussy, we clung to any method for tracking progress. We rationalized that our system prevented middle of the night arguments fueled by our faulty memories.
Eventually, his baby ways grew more predictable — and we decided to write-off all fighting past bedtime — but I couldn’t stop writing my squiggles on the chart. Whitney talked me into putting down the pen for three days but I missed it too much to stop. At the end of each nanny or babysitting session, I would jot down all their notes onto my paper. For eight months. Around then, I finally admitted to myself that Holden had settled into some regular naps and I wasn’t learning anything new. I just loved keeping track. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Before Milo was born, the Itzbeen baby timer was born. Somehow, its very existence validated my neurosis as legit. I longed for it, but I stuck with my paper spreadsheet. Again for eight months. Because, come on, it would just be rude to the second child to stop any sooner, right?
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During my baby-making hiatus, two important things happened: I lost my blue folder with sixteen months of practically-useless baby data AND the iPhone was released with heaps of apps to track babies.
So I could begin anew.
No longer tethered to my old-fashioned paper chart, I modernized with Baby Connect. Charts! Graphs! Email! Photos! Multiple devices! Bliss!
Each day when I pick up Sawyer from his childcare center, I photograph their daily notes to enter them into my records.
I know that keeping all this data is a feeble attempt to control the uncontrollable. I know that my son is more than the sum of his ounces of milk and minutes of sleep. I know that entering in “NAP FAIL” or even “EPIC NAP FAIL” on an iPhone app doesn’t make it any less frustrating. But it is so hard to stop. It all comforts me. In the nerdiest possible way.
Breaking up is hard. No longer insistent on “making it to eight months,” I figured that I’d be that much more of a laissez-faire mom if I quit a few days early.
I quit cold turkey over the weekend.
+++
Not sponsored. At $5 for the app, I wish!
Love it Heather! I only measured for a few months with each son, until a flight involving time zone changes came along and made the whole thing seem too hard. I live with less data in my life now, but still like that I tracked it for a while. I do think measuring it makes managing it easier. Or maybe it’s just distracting. Either way, thanks for the fun post. Xx
Funny you mention that. When I did a time zone change, I was a huge nerd about trying to reconcile the data. BUT FOR WHAT?!
I complained to the nice folks at baby connect that their algorithm for the New Year was off.
Ha! I feel so much better knowing I am not alone in my baby tracking : ). As a mechanical engineer, I loved (!) looking at all the data I collected in my Total Baby iPhone app. I tracked my daughter’s diapers, sleep, food, growth, doctor’s visits, for about a year. I entered in data from notes the babysitter and daycare left, and had my husband fill in the data when he was on duty. It was really comforting to me, knowing that I could acurately answer questions like, how much does she sleep each day (on average), when does she eat and how much, how many diapers are we using per day? And so on… It was all there, at my finger tips in my phone. I too got to a point where I didn’t feel I was learning anything new and it was too much of a pain to keep up. Correcting for time zone changes was a pain too, but I did it, more than a few times! Huge data nerd, here, too : ).
On a slightly unrelated note, after an especially productive pumping day I was so tempted to take a picture of the milk filled bottles (9oz in one sitting!) and post it on facebook with the caption “Boo-ya!” but I didn’t. I was so proud of my breasts that day : ).
Heather, I’m not kidding when I say I almost emailed to ask you for a graph of your output re: the efficacy of the cookies! I was desperate last week when trying to get my pumping output up so I can make it to the ridiculous goal of 6 months before supplementing. So thanks for providing the data even without my asking.
We have so never done anything like this, though I completely understand the desire to control what cannot be controlled. I’m sure that impulse is just coming out in other ways in our case! We took a picture of the baby’s daily data on the board this Monday, thinking we should pay attention, but by the next day we had forgotten to keep doing that, and yesterday I forgot to even look at the board. Figured I would just feed her if she seemed hungry.
Relevant to my own neurosis, though . . . I just pumped a record TEN ounces of milk while reading this blog post. Pumping every two hours last week seems like it has finally paid off!
When my son was born 3 years ago, we were feeding via SNS (ugh) and I felt the need to manually keep track of everything. We showed up at his 2 week appointment with all the data…and our doctor didn’t even ask to see it. It (among other things) was making me nuts so I stopped writing everything down & just learned to read his cues.
However, I had twin girls 3 months ago, and the Baby Connect app has been INVALUABLE to us. There is no way I would be able to remember everything that happens in their day without it. They were 4 weeks early and pretty small, so it really helped to be able to quantify how much they were eating.
One awesome feature of Baby Connect is that you can have multiple users & devices all access the baby’s data. We have been fortunate to have a night nurse (I love her) and she can enter feedings either in her phone, as can my husband and I. We also have it on our iPad so I can enter data if I happen to be playing Words With Friends while feeding the babies.
I also like being able to enter their height/weight data from the doctor so it’s easily accessible. I just can’t remember it all, and now I don’t have to. I recommend the app to everyone but especially twin parents. I can’t imagine I’ll use it forever, but it has made the newborn phase a little less painful.
We have twins and we love baby connect! Since we have people helping us at times it really keeps things organized. When food = sleep we are always wanting to know how much each drank, who pooped, what time etc. I also love the medical tab where we can put in meds given and track their weights with the built in growth chart. Anyway, with twins (and a 3 year old) this has been a great tool to keep everyone informed.
Oh crap, this blog post made me feel so much better! I used the Total Baby app until my daughter’s first birthday. Because of course 365+1 days is a completely rational number to take insane amounts of arguably useless data. But what if I have another one and I need to know when she got her 6th tooth?? Or maybe she will want all of this if she has kids of her own in 30 years?? In all honesty, I still love looking at it… they even added more charting options!
(Full disclosure: I’m an engineer as well.)
I have resisted the call of the iPhone thus far, but this post makes me wish I had one for the sake of data tracking (full disclosure: I looked for baby-tracking apps for my Nook last night but resisted). I do, however, keep every paper I get from daycare for Connor noting when he ate, how much he ate, when he napped and for how long, and how many diapers got changed and what they contained. I’m keeping these…because I’m sentimental? I’m not sure why, but I can’t bear to throw them away deliberately. Maybe this is may way to make sense of the seat-of-your-pants life that having a baby creates?
On a separate note, I enjoy the freedom of no longer breastfeeding or pumping, but reading everyone’s posts about b-milk makes me miss that part of being a mother that I found so binding. Oh, how quickly I can miss “the old days” even when my baby’s only 8-months old!
Well I must say, it’s nice to know I’m not alone on this front! I found an app that I think is more for contractors and time sheets and such, but it’s worked quite well for me. And the inane questions?? Yup. Gotta answer it… ‘just how long has this nap been?’, ‘did he really wake up 4 times last night?’… it does, it adds comfort to be able to know, but I certainly lack the comfort to be anything but along for the ride on the other parts! And yes, the scientist in me likes all the pretty charts and graphs I can make with my data… so it’s 8 months and counting… and I just don’t know when I’ll stop! Sigh…
I like and use StickyTot: stickytot.com.There’s a free Android app and a iPhone web app. The apps keepe track of notes, pictures, growth data, calculates percentile. It has a nifty feature where parents can share tracking data. There is also a desktop browser version.
@Mihnea, Great recommendation. I don’t have an Android, but you probably helped a future rookie mom with the tip.
[...] son. You may or may not recall that I recorded his every eat and sleep for eight months (RELATED: confessions of a baby tracker) and the sitter surpassed my expectations. She brought activities suitable for his age and [...]
Love this!! I have been using Baby Connect since day one inthe hospital and now going on 7.5 months of tracking all baby activities. I admit as well it is a bit time consuming and sitters just look at me so strange when I download the app to their phone but when it’s used properly I can “check in” and see what’s going on with the baby when I’m away. Also-I will never forget when the milestones occurred, I was able to capture everyone so far!
I have to say I’m not a baby tracker but I’m kinda bummed I didn’t with my little one! I have journals dating back to college (I’ve been out quite some time…) but I stopped the feeding/pooping/pee pee log right around 3 months…I think I realized I was able to feed her fine! And naps, well, we’re doing quiet time at our house now. I don’t want to write down the naps, it’s too depressing.
My baby is almost 10 months old and I’m STILL tracking everything. In some odd way, I feel in control too, which I’m not. But at least I know how long she slept, when I changed her and when I gave her medicine last. I still can’t remember these things. I was just thinking if I should stop or just cut back to at night when I can’t remember it a sleep haze. Thank you for making me feel better, although you stopped after 9 months LOL and I’m still going…..she’s been sleeping for 36 minutes and 50 seconds….okay I think I have a problem LOL!!
thank you thank you…thank all of you for validating the pile of tiny notebooks that i should now put in my son’s memory box. yeah, that’s right, i’m so list-driven, i used paper & pencil. no digital for me, but then again, i’m not an engineer. and i disagree: being able to angrily scraw GAH NAP FAIL!!!!! did take the edge off. the last tiny notebook ends a few weeks after his first birthday. no good reason; i just woke up one day and felt it was done. oh geez, i’m actually feeling nostalgic writing this…
It’s nice to hear from the other baby tracking parents (and wannabes).
Well, it’s me again… Here to confess that at 21 months, I’m still tracking sleep (and the random dose of ibuprofen if needed…) after all these months. This weekend was the first weekend I didn’t remember to rush to download my data, so I think I’m probably ready to quit. More than anything, I’ve enjoyed seeing the pretty graphs, interesting to see how sleep develops and finally goes all the way through the night, and yes, writing ‘naplet’, or ‘nap failure’ at least gave me some joy as well. Cheers! Maybe I’ll go until his second birthday and then call it…