What to track in the first weeks (and what to skip)
Everybody tells you to keep track of things in the first weeks, and almost nobody says what. Below is what actually gets asked about, by you and at the check-ups, and what you can leave out without consequence.
One thing first: this is about record keeping, not health. If you are unsure how things are going, your midwife or health visitor is the place to go, not an app.
Feeds
This is the entry you look back at most, and the only one whose answer you genuinely want to hand. What is worth recording:
- The time the feed started.
- For breastfeeding: which side, and how long.
- For a bottle: the number of millilitres.
If you feed on both sides, that is two entries. It sounds fussy, but it is the only way to keep a time per side, and that is precisely what you want to know later. When feeds per day are counted, entries close together are counted as one feed, so the numbers do not double.
What you can leave: precision to the minute. Whether a feed began at 3:02 or 3:10 changes nothing you will read off it.
Nappies
Wet and dirty nappies are the most common question at early check-ups, because they say something about whether enough is going in. So the recording is kept as light as it can be: you tap whether the nappy was wet, dirty, or both.
What you can leave: colour, quantity, brand of nappy. If there is something you want to remember, it belongs in a note rather than in a category.
Sleep
Sleep goes in with a timer you start when the baby falls asleep and stop when they wake. The exact total moves around anyway, so there is little point staring at it. What you want is how the sleep is spread across the day: when the long stretches fall, and whether the night is getting longer than the daytime yet.
What you can leave: labelling something as a nap or a night. The time of day already says it, and the app puts the days side by side so you can see it.
Forgetting to stop the timer is the most common mistake, and it takes one tap to fix by editing the end time afterwards.
Crying
Crying is the one entry on this list that is not useful to everybody. If things are going fine in your house, skip it. But if there is a stretch where there is a lot of it, recording the start and end is surprisingly reassuring, for two reasons. You see that it usually lasted less time than it felt like, and you see whether it gathers around a particular hour.
Notes
Anything without a category that you want to read back: the first time something stood out, a day that went differently, what you meant to ask the midwife. One line is enough. Notes are the safety net that stops a sixth kind of entry from ever being needed.
What you can safely skip
- Daily weighing. That happens at the check-ups, and measuring at home mostly adds worry.
- Logging pumping separately, unless it is the main event in your house.
- Milestones. That is a photo album, and you have one.
- Anything you fill in because the field is there. A field you never read back is work with no return.
Gaps are fine
There will be days when you record nothing. A busy day, a day with visitors, a day when it was simply too much. That is not missing data you are supposed to have feelings about. The patterns that matter live in weeks, not in a single day, and a week with a gap still shows the same rhythm.
Why that rhythm is worth having is in why keeping a log helps. Why the short list of entries is a deliberate choice is in why a simple app is all you need.