How We Use BabyLog Every Day with Our First Baby

Our son was born in mid-2025. Within the first 48 hours, two things became clear: we needed to track everything, and the apps we tried weren't cutting it.

This is the story of how we use BabyLog — the app we ended up building — in our daily life as first-time parents.

The morning handoff

Most mornings start the same way. I wake up, grab my phone, and open BabyLog before I even get out of bed.

The Home screen shows me the last feed time, last nap duration, and last nappy change — all logged by my partner overnight. I don't need to ask "how was the night?" — I can see it.

If there were three feeds between midnight and 6am, I know it was a rough one. If there was a long stretch of sleep, I know she's in a good rhythm. By the time I walk into the nursery, I already have context.

My partner does the same when I've been on overnight duty. The handoff is silent. No texts, no verbal recaps, no sticky notes. Just open the app.

What we actually track

We don't track everything — just what's useful for us right now.

Feeds are the big one. Our son is on a mix of breast and bottle. For breast feeds, we log which side and how long. For bottles, we log the volume in ml. The app shows a feed estimate on the Home tile based on recent patterns, which helps us plan outings — "she'll probably want another feed in about an hour."

Sleep we track with the timer. Tap start when she falls asleep, tap end when she wakes. Sometimes we forget to start the timer (because we were also falling asleep), so we log it manually after the fact. Duration calculates either way.

Nappies are quick — one tap to open, select the type (wee, poo, mixed, or clean for a false alarm), and save. We added colour and consistency when she was younger and we were trying to understand what was normal. Now we mostly just log the type.

Solids became important around six months. We log what she tried and her reaction — loved, liked, disliked, or allergic. This was my partner's idea. She works in childcare and knows how important it is to track reactions when introducing new foods, especially for allergy monitoring.

The cross-platform thing

My partner uses an iPhone. I use Android.

This is the reason BabyLog exists. Every tracker we tried either didn't sync between platforms, synced slowly, or charged for it. We were literally texting each other "120ml bottle at 2:15" and hoping the other person saw it.

BabyLog works in the browser. We both installed it to our home screens. Same app, same data, same moment. When she logs a feed on her iPhone, I see it on my Android within seconds.

It sounds like a small thing. It's not. When you're both sleep-deprived and trying to coordinate care, having one reliable source of truth makes everything easier.

At the child health nurse

The first time we took our son for a check-up, the nurse asked about feeding frequency and nappy output over the past week.

Before BabyLog, we would have said something like "um, she feeds about every three hours? And nappies... maybe six a day?" Vague. Unhelpful.

Instead, I opened the app and showed her. Exact feed times, volumes, durations. Nappy count by day. Sleep totals. The nurse was impressed — not because the app was fancy, but because we actually had the data.

That moment confirmed we were building the right thing.

The childcare educator effect

My partner isn't just a parent — she's a childcare educator. She works with babies and toddlers every day. When I was building BabyLog, she had opinions about everything. And she was right about all of it.

The nappy colour options came from her. Not from a medical textbook — from what she actually sees. Tar, mustard, gold, orange, brown, frothy, green, olive, red, chalk, black. Real-world colours that parents can match at a glance.

The one-handed mode was her observation too. She watched me trying to log a feed while holding a wriggling baby and said "the save button needs to be on the same side as my thumb." Left-hand mode puts all the primary actions on the left. Right-hand mode puts them on the right. You choose in settings.

The solids reaction tracking (loved, liked, disliked, allergic) came from her professional practice. When you're introducing new foods, knowing how the baby responded is just as important as knowing what they ate.

Having someone who works with babies professionally as a design partner made the app fundamentally better than what I would have built alone as a developer.

When things got hard

Around four months, our daughter's sleep fell apart. She went from sleeping four-hour stretches to waking every 90 minutes. We were exhausted and confused.

Looking at the sleep data in BabyLog over two weeks, we could see the pattern clearly: total sleep hours were actually the same, but the stretches were shorter and more frequent. A quick search confirmed it — the four-month sleep regression. Knowing it was developmental and temporary (and that her total sleep was still fine) made it easier to ride out.

Without the data, we would have just been anxious. With it, we could see that she was still sleeping enough — just differently.

When my mum looks after our daughter for an afternoon, we give her Viewer access. She can see the last feed and nap times without us having to write it all down. She doesn't add logs — she just checks in.

If we had a nanny, we'd give them Editor access so they could log during their shift. The role system (Owner, Editor, Viewer) means everyone has exactly the access they need.

Setting it up takes about a minute: go to the baby's share settings, enter their email, choose a role. They create their own account and accept the invite. Done.

The honest truth

BabyLog isn't perfect. We're still building it. There are features we want to add and rough edges we want to smooth out.

But we use it every single day. It's the app we open more than any other. And it solves the exact problems we built it to solve: cross-platform sync that actually works, fast one-handed logging, and data that belongs to us.

If your family has the same frustrations we did, give it a try. It's free, it works on any device, and it takes two minutes to set up.