Baby Loggers

If you don't have kids, you probably think the idea of a baby logger is at best obsessive and at worst pretty creepy. What is it? Just what it sounds like - an app that lets you track when your baby falls asleep, wakes up, has a diaper change and what was in that diaper, when he eats and either how long and which side if you're breastfeeding or how much if it's from a bottle. Some also let you track development, keep track of doctor's appointments, and more.

The thing is, when the baby is first born, the doctors want you to track this stuff. You need to make sure enough food is going in and coming out, and that the baby isn't sleeping too long between feedings, to make sure everything's working right. At first we wrote it all down on a paper they gave us at the hospital, but then I discovered apps that let you track it with one tap. More recently, it's been clear to us that E has never really slept as much as they claim newborns sleep, and we wanted to keep track so we could try and get his sleep patterns into more of a, well, pattern. With the help of a baby logger, we now know for sure that he sleeps an average of 11-12 hours a day instead of the usual 14-16, including only 2-3 hours of naps instead of 4-6. Now that we know what we're dealing with, and what a bad night looks like versus a good night, we can start to address the problem.

I've tried three baby loggers since E was born, and the one I've stuck with is Baby Geek. The interface takes a little exploring to figure out, but you'll have it mastered by the end of the day. I used this to track diapers and feedings for a few days, but have been tracking sleep with it for two months now, so that's the feature I'm most familiar with. Baby Geek gives you simple one-touch tracking, with the nice touch that if you go to change the time of an event, there is both a clock to adjust and buttons to automatically jump it back 5, 10, or 15 minutes. It has the best graphs of any of the loggers I tried - you can view totals of each type of event by day, or timelines with all or only one type of event shown, and it separates day and night sleep (at times you pick). You can email the entries and have the program sync across two devices, so both parents (or one Nd a childcare provider) can keep track. And probably a dozen other features I'm not thinking of because I only use the most basic one. And all this is only $.99.

The other two I tried are BabyBix and Baby Log. I liked Log better than Bix, but not well enough to shell out $4.99 for it once the free version ran out, which only took about a day.

Here is how the three stack up (Some are my subjective ratings 1-10, 10 highest): 

	Baby Bix	Baby Log	Baby Geek	Winner
Price	Free	Free trial for a day or two, then $4.99	$0.99	Bix
Starting an event	Several taps	Two taps	One tap	Geek
Email reports	No	Yes	Yes	Log & Geek
Quality of graphs	5	8	8.5	Geek
Ease of use	3	8	9	Geek
Unique feature	Integrated message board	Bar and line graphs	Day vs night sleep shown on graph	Log or Geek
Unique annoyance	Crashes a lot	Past events must be entered by start time and duration, not start and end time	Only shows past two weeks' with of data	No one wins this!

This entry is cross-posted to Hey Hey, It's an iPad Blog!.

Myth vs Reality: Cloth Diapering

Let me tell you, becoming a parent provides fodder for a few dozen of these Myth vs Reality posts!

Cloth diapering is going to be difficult and tedious, but will be worth it so I'll muddle through - Actually, my husband and I agree that it's far easier and more enjoyable than we expected! Changing the diaper might take another step or two, but not so much that you notice it. And while yes, we have to do laundry every 2-3 days, even that has its upsides. There have been plenty of days where the only thing I managed to get done other than feeding the baby and letting him nap on me was diaper laundry, and it's nice to have something that's actually achievable in those early weeks! The laundry really only takes about 15 minutes total of human effort, and most of that is the putting away.

I have to make sense of all this information, figure out exactly what I want to use, and get all the diapers I will ever need before the baby is born! - This one had me going a little crazy a few weeks before he was due. The truth is, if you grab a couple dozen prefolds and a handful of covers you're set to start, and you can try out all the pockets and fitteds and AIOs or whatever you like a piece at a time as you go. Find something you like, buy more; something you don't, sell it. You can even start with disposables and build your stash a piece at a time from the ground up. There's no right or wrong. You don't have to fully invest in any one "system" or commit to one brand. And in the end, you won't know what fits your baby best in advance anyhow, so buying two dozen BumGenius 4.0s or nothing but Thirsties covers might result in having to rebuy your whole stash anyhow!

We'll use disposables or pocket diapers when we're out and about, and only use the prefolds at home - Some people do this and it works fine. But we found it annoying to keep track of what to put in the diaper bag separately, plus we'd either have to change him before we leave (whether he's wet or not), or else wind up with extra stuff at changing time. With disposables, we'd still have the wet diaper we just took off of him to deal with. And with pockets, we'd have a clean cover and snappi that we'd have to remember to dig out of the diaper bag later. Changing a prefold on the go is a little harder, especially if you're somewhere without a real changing station, but for us the annoyance factor is lower overall.

iPad Mama

I just wanted to mention that I also have an iPad blog, and from time to time I make posts about how I use my iPad in my parental duties. From now on, I'll cross-post those here, but in case you're curious here are the previous posts:

How my iPad taught me to cloth diaper and saved my (baby's) butt at 2am.

Why I would tell any expecting mom who can afford one to buy an iPad.

Attention Disposable Diaper Users

I have a very important message for you, from a cloth diaperer. No, I'm not here to judge or convert you. I mostly use cloth diapers to save money, though the lack of trash is nice, too. But I couldn't care less if you don't want to do extra laundry - totally understandable.

No, I'm here to help you out. Because from what I hear, many of you think it's normal to clean poop out of your baby's hair. To go through several extra outfits each week due to poop on both the baby's clothes and your own. To carry new clothes for both of you everywhere you go. I have never done any of these things, and neither have many (though not all, of course) cloth diaperers. How?

Diaper covers. Not the cheap decorative ones that come matching with an outfit from Target. Serious covers with PUL, snaps or velcro, and elastic leg gussets. I'm not here to judge, and neither are the covers - they don't care if they're covering a prefold, a fitted, a Huggies, or a Pampers. They hold the poop in no matter what diaper it's leaking out of. When we went out of town for a few days, we bought a pack of Huggies Swaddlers but also brought a few covers. At least twice in four days, poop wound up on the covers but not us.

They cost $9-15 each new (you can also find them, like all CD stuff, used). You can reuse them diaper after diaper, only tossing them in the laundry once they've contained some poop. They come in every color and pattern imaginable - my baby was born at the end of May, and I was annoyed when it started cooling off and we had to put pants over his cute covers. You may have to try a few to see which fit your baby the best, but you can recoup a lot of the money selling them used - or some places, like Cotton Babies, have a thirty day satisfaction guarantee. To get you started, take a look at Flip or Econobum from Cotton Babies, Thirsties, or Bummis, or check Etsy.

And just say no to poosplosions.

Myth vs Reality: Breastfeeding (Part 1)

These aren't necessarily all things I believed right up until my baby proved me wrong, but they are certainly things I believed at some point before getting pregnant and learning more on the topic.

Teeth are nature's way of telling you to wean the baby - First, of course, some babies get teeth at just a couple months old, or are even born with a tooth; but let's ignore those outliers. What I didn't know was that, even after starting solids, babies still have to have either breastmilk or formula until they're a year old. I was envisioning eight-month-olds living on nothing but jarred baby food, but that's not how it works. Why would I voluntarily "wean" if it just means switching to formula? I haven't yet had to nurse with teeth, but I've heard it's really not bad - and honestly, I know full well that he could bite me plenty hard with those gums if he wanted to.

Nursing in public is kinda weird and unnecessary - The truth is, it's very easy to nurse discreetly (until he pops off and tries to make me nipple-flash the world), and it's far from unnecessary. If I could never nurse him in public, I'd either never be able to go anywhere, or would have to pump a LOT more in order to always have a bottle on hand just in case. I think my opinion on nursing in public was changed by one experience: I'm a grad student, and a fellow student had brought her baby to a research meeting. She was sitting next to me, and at one point I snuck a peek at the baby and had to do a double-take when I realized she was nursing and I hadn't even noticed! I couldn't see any boob or anything, and if I hadn't looked right at her I never would have known it happened. I hadn't realized until then just how unintrusive it can be.

Pumping is easy, I'll always have plenty of pumped milk around! - For some people, it's tedious but not too bad. But I don't respond well to the pump. See, a baby gets milk by simultaneously squeezing and sucking. Their mouth is the ultimate mommy-milking machine, and is very efficient. The pump only has suction to work with; some people can get plenty of milk that way and some people have some trouble. I generally get 1-2 oz in a 20 minute pumping session. So I don't have a freezer stash; I'm doing well to have just enough to leave my husband one ounce per hour I want to work, which is just enough to keep the baby from rioting.

Mei Tai vs Pouch Sling

Babywearing can be a bit intimidating because there are just so many options (though cloth diapering is even scarier)! We have two carriers, and between them our five-month old has yet to touch a stroller. I'd thought people with multiple carriers were just looking for ways to spend money, but they're definitely good for different situations.

The mei tai
Pros:
- Very comfortable and easy on the back, even after an hour or more.
- Several different positions and carries: facing in, facing out, legs in, legs out, on the back, etc.
- Basic positioning is very simple, I had no problem getting it on and the baby in comfortably the very first time.
- Great for a wide range of sizes. We started using it at just a couple days old, and many people use them up to 35 lbs.
- Baby is very secure in it, even asleep. I truly have both hands free.
Cons:
- Difficult to store and carry neatly; those long straps want to fall everywhere.
- Takes a minute or two to put on and take off, and sometimes you feel like you're wrestling with an octopus.
- Wearing it without the baby looks and feels a bit goofy.
- I found it difficult to figure out how to nurse in it, though some women love their mei tais specifically because they find it easy to nurse in. I did work it out eventually, though switching from regular wear to nursing takes major readjustment of the carrier.
Best for:
- Anytime the baby will be in the carrier for a single long stretch - walks or hikes, or shopping trips to a single store.

The pouch sling:
Pros:
- Very quick and easy to get on and off, and the baby in and out.
- Compact, easy to stick in the diaper bag to carry around.
- Cheap - cost $20 used vs the mei tai's $60 used.
- Wearing it without the baby in it looks minimally silly.
- I find it much easier to nurse in. Once I figured out how to correctly position the baby for carrying, I made a minor adjustment and was nursing.
- Several ways to carry the baby, though fewer than the mei tai.
Cons:
- The #1 biggest problem: Because the weight is distributed unevenly, the sling hurts my back if I wear it for too long at a stretch.
- The baby is already getting too big for it. Soon I'll only be able to hold him in the hip carry, which requires one hand to balance him and isn't a position where he can nurse.
- Pretty much all carries will require you to use one hand now and then to steady the baby and keep him from leaning too far to one side. It's never a truly hands-free carrier the way the mei tai is.
- It took me a couple of days and quite a few YouTube videos to figure out correct positioning at first.
- Positioning is especially tricky before the baby has good head control. I don't recommend it for a newborn.
Best for:
- Short trips, or times when you'll be making several stops and the baby will be in and out of the carrier a lot.
- I use it more than the mei tai around the house; I toss him in it when I need a free hand to put laundry in or make myself lunch and he's feeling too clingy to be set down for a few minutes. I also use it when I want to nurse him while getting things done.
- Because it's so compact, this is the carrier I toss in the diaper bag when I'm not really expecting to need one, but you never know when you'll pop into the grocery store for something on the way home.

Overall, I love them both and find that between the two of them I'm covered for just about any situation. I'm disappointed that he's outgrowing the sling so soon; I'm considering getting a ring sling, since they're more adjustable for size, but with all that fabric it does lose the compact portability of the pouch sling.

(In case you are wondering, my sling is a Hotsling, and my mei tai is from Mei Tai Baby. Very pleased with both brands, both are very well-made!)

Myths vs Reality: Newborns

The books, the websites, the classes - they lied like rugs. And things would have been a little easier if I hadn't been fed these lines.

Babies sleep 14-18 hours/day - Ha! Not this one! Try 11-12, and yes, I've tracked it with iPad apps so that's not an estimate. Every single person who met him for the first three months - starting with a pediatrician the day he was born - commented on how "alert" he is. We decided that alert is a euphemism for awake, since most newborns that we met were asleep and he never was.

Babies eat every 2-3 hours - See, that's the longest a newborn goes without eating. In this case, I know E is normal. I've seen plenty of other new moms convinced that something is wrong because their baby eats every hour, or for several hours straight. Most newborns eat more often than every 2-3 hours, and almost all engage in "cluster feeding" for 2-4 hours (or more!) now and then, especially during growth spurts.

Babies sleep through the night by three months - Actually, he did this. Around three weeks, he started sleeping longer stretches, and from 3-12 weeks he reliably slept a 4-7 hour stretch every night. But after he was born, I found out about the four month sleep regression, when it all goes to shit. And he hit it a month early. So for nearly two months, he was back to sleeping in 1-2 hour chunks. Now, at 5 months, he's starting to alternate between bad nights and nights where he'll have one or two 3-hour stretches. So hopefully we're slowly coming out of that, although I know now that some babies don't sleep well til nearly a year. Just never listen to anyone who tells you that babies sleep through the night by X weeks/months.

Changing diapers is a nasty, disgusting chore - Reality isn't always worse than the myth! I don't mind the diaper changes at all (well, except when E is in a bad mood and screams through one). Maybe this is because cloth diapering slows the process down just a bit, but I often find diaper change time to be a nice bonding time. I sing him some songs, kiss his bare tummy, maybe even read him a book while letting him air out a little (but with a cloth over him just in case, of course). And everyone was right that exclusively-breastfed poo really isn't that bad. Sure sometimes a big poo that he manages to get on his feet while I'm removing the diaper is kinda gross, and he does pee everywhere now and then. But we change his diaper a good 10x a day, and those things happen maybe once a week. Overall, changing diapers? Not as bad as advertised!