The Baby Activity Logger Review

Eating, sleeping and filling diapers — this we are told fills the entirety of a baby’s existence for a good long time. There are many months between birth and the change in this truth. While it holds true (and even for awhile afterward) it is important to be able to be aware of the baby’s status regarding these three activities. When the question arises “when was the last time we changed his diaper?” The correct answer is never going to be “I don’t know.”

It is the truth universally acknowledged that a baby deep in a fit of profound and loud crying must be in want of something. The trick is to determine what that something is because at 2:30 in the morning a baby crying inconsolably, unable to express in words what is bothering him, is a sure fire way to ruin any hope for sleep.

I first looked to get help from some kind of hardware. I found a devise that with a push of one of four buttons, allows one to see the last time the baby had slept, gotten a diaper change, or eaten — two buttons because women who breastfeed alternate sides. It was $30 and seemed like a fancy stopwatch so we skipped it.

I turned to the app store since my wife and I both have iPhones. I found some programs that fit the bill, some of them free (usually quite poorly reviewed) but it was not until I found the Baby Activity Logger that I knew we had found the right program.

The program is designed to be used with only one hand. This is invaluable to parents, who most often have at least one hand full. A couple of taps on the screen and you have logged that the baby started eating. Later, two more taps and the baby having finished is logged as well.

Most programs I saw did not go into detail on diaper logging. The importance of this cannot be understated. For example, we became concerned that it was seemingly a long time since Chaim had defecated. Checking the log told us the exact date and time of the bowel movement.

It may seem like ridiculous minutia, but when you are on the phone with your pediatrician at midnight, and he asks how many times per day the baby is eating, it is not the time to scratch your heads and try to figure it out.

Another feature I really like about the Baby Activity App is its ability to export the log data– whether you would like to email it to a friend/person who thinks you are over-sharing or even put it into a spreadsheet for further analysis.

For all of its features and qualities, the program is certainly worth $5 and I recommend it to all expecting parents who own iPhones — I don’t know of Android versions of the program. Having just searched for “Baby Activity Logger Android” I can tell you that there are no comparable programs either, alas.