The Nerd Parent's Guide to Life with a Newborn
I jotted down the basic skeleton of this piece back when Ari was around six weeks old. These tools, tips and techie bits helped us out a lot in those bleary early days, so I thought I'd share them as I have quite a few new or or expectant parents in my circle of life at the moment.
Tracking feeds
BabyTracker Pro
If you're anything like us, the minute you bring your tiny baby home from the hospital you'll start instantly worrying whether they're doing ok. Feeding enough? Peeing and pooping enough? Sleeping enough? Sleeping too much? What helped give us some sense of control was tracking Ari's feeds, nappies and naps. At first, it was just for reassurance.
We decided to not use an app in the very early weeks, and instead created a simple print out that just listed date, time etc and clipped it to a miniature clipboard. We found this handier at the start as he simply fed so often and meant I didn't have to constantly have my phone with me (we also don't bring mobile phones to bed, so it was handy to have the clipboard for tracking feeds through the night). After we found our groove, we used (and still use) the excellent Baby Tracker app. Not only does it sync seamlessly between our devices, you can also use it to track other things (like measurements from each check up, or any time we've taken Ari's temperature or given him medicine). The app's brilliant charts were hugely helpful when it came to figuring out Ari's napping rhythms, as you can easily see patterns emerge.
As time goes on, you can remove sections you no longer use (we now only log Ari's sleep). It was particularly useful when travelling, as we'd so often lose track of time when outside our regular rhythm and being able to quickly figure out when our micronapper last napped and plan accordingly prevented quite a few overtired tears.
Shared calendar
Fantastical or iOS calendar app
Once, in our early days of dating, Ben and I accidentally both left a venue without saying goodbye to each other (we may or may not have been a little tipsy at the time). Maybe because of this – or because we are huge nerds – we've always been big proponents of creating calendar events for dates and events, and inviting each other to them. When we initially moved to Lisbon we also made great use of a shared family calendar, which became even more useful when Ari came along. In the first few weeks especially, we had a ton of appointments – doula visits, doctor's check-ups, trips to see lactation consultants – and knowing that the event and all its pertinent details (start and end time, exact location, cost, etc), was in the calendar and not on a scrap of paper buried under half a dozen dirty muslin cloths gave us great piece of mind.
Scanning important documents
Scannable or Notes app
For such teeny creatures, babies generate quite a bit of paperwork. We used Scannable to scan things on the fly, which you can then imported into whatever note/database tool you like (for us, it's Notion). Again, it's reassuring to know that copies of important documents are safe and sound in the digital cloud. The iOS Notes app has a handy scanning feature too.
Shared notes and to do lists
We used shared notes (again using the standard iOS Notes app) in the early days, especially during health checks – as I would chat to the doctor or nurse, Ben would jot down notes, which would ultimately made their way to our database in Notion or I used a note to quickly hot down any new foods Ari was eating (we did the whole "100 new foods before 1" thing, which was a great way of busting us out of lazy food habits). For food shops, we have a shared Reminders list we add to as needed (if you have an Amazon smart speaker, there's also a handy IFFT integration that lets you add things using Alexa, e.g. "Add oats to my shopping list").
Smart lighting
Ikea Tradfri system and Apple's HomeKit
We're both big fans of smart lighting, and it really came into its own when Ari came along. Using the Ikea Tradfri system and Apple's HomeKit were able to remotely turn on lights super low (e.g. setting Ben's bedside light to 5%) during middle of the night nappy changes, which made it easier to get Ari back down afterwards.
AirPods (or bluetooth headphones) for silent TV watching
This is Ben's tip – he was only able to get Ari to nap while baby wearing him in the stretchy wrap, Ergobaby or Boba, so would pop in his headphones and mainline a TV show on his phone while Ari snoozed.
AlroBaby baby monitor
For the first few weeks, Ari didn't really leave our side so there wasn't any needed for a baby monitor. But when we eventually started being able to put him down solo for a bit in the evenings, we invested in the Arlo Baby (and it is an investment – it's pricey!), which we still use now. As well as a night vision HD camera, it also tracks air quality and temperature (super important during hot Lisbon summers or cold Irish winters) and doubles (triples?) as a white noise machine and nightlight. It was really handy when travelling to have all three things in one product.
Shared iCloud albums for us and family
We might have started this because we were living miles from home, but I really recommend it. We have a shared album with our families that we regularly add photos to so that aunties and grandparents can see what Ari is up. Bonus: We both use this album as our screensaver (with the pics set on shuffle mode) for daily doses of nostalgia and cuteness.
