Caring for your first baby is a lot like caring for your first car: You never want to leave its side, can’t wait to show it off to your friends (but won’t leave them alone with it), delicately wash it, and take notice of every new sound. And like new car owners, first-time parents can be a bit neurotic about every fluid leak and fill-up.
Since you'll want to keep your baby as finely tuned as possible, you’ll need to keep track of everything that happens. Pencil and paper may work fine for gearheads, but parents need a bit more horsepower. For bumper to bumper coverage, Total Baby is miles ahead of the competition. And with that, we're done with the car references -- let's talk about the app!
The ultimate resource for everything about your little bundle of joy, Total Baby might just remember more about your little one than you do. Dirty diapers, feedings, sleep cycles, baths, vaccines, and even allergies are all stored in Total Baby’s boundless logs. Every bit of data -- such as length of breast feedings and poop frequency -- are effortlessly recorded and easily accessible at your weekly doctor visit.
There’s a built-in sleep timer so you’ll know exactly how much (or little) shut-eye you’re getting, and its easy interface is especially useful for on-the-go changings and cat naps. Extrapolated graphs can pinpoint trends in baby’s feeding and sleeping frequency, and handy CDC and WHO growth charts will let you see exactly how your baby stacks up against other kids.
But the best feature of Total Baby has to be its Wi-Fi sync, which lets parents (or grandparents) share data between devices. So when baby spends the day with dad, mom can get all of the vital statistics beamed right to her phone. Total Baby for iPhone is priced at $4.99, with no native iPad version available at present.
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The Best is a weekly column in which we spotlight the most helpful or impressive iOS app to fit a certain need, whether it's a part of your day-to-day life or just something cool that might come in handy down the line.
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shaptavajra
April 13, 2012 at 11:22am
I am an app hoarder. I probably tried 6 baby apps before I shelled out the five bucks for this one all because I did not want to spend the money. Spend the money. It's incredibly helpful with no annoying ads or forums that you really don't need. You can sync between two phones if you want, but my husband just texts me info when I'm at work and I load it into my app. Very useful when you want to start seeing feeding/sleeping patterns or how many diapers is normal for your baby. We're starting solids now and because I had established her routines we could easily see what foods were causing her issues right now. Highly recommended.
