New parents need all the help they can get! Let technology and apps aid you in ways you didn’t know you needed. From a sick and totally redesigned baby monitor to a savvy feeding app that delivers a daily report, Shibani has savvy apps for smart new parents.
1. Log and share in every detail of your baby’s day from feeding to napping with the Baby Connect app
I heavily “tested” this app and couldn’t live without it for many months of my life. It is super user-friendly with icons and timers that start in just a touch, allowing you to use the one spare hand you have to work the app (the other is holding the baby, of course). Customizable features are thorough and grow with your child (so when done with bottle feeding, you can just log in food); and covers not just the basics of eating and sleeping patterns for your baby but even catalogs milestones, immunization and doctor weigh-ins and weird things like bm consistency, which, as any parent knows, becomes an obsessive thing for you for some time. I also love that anyone who cares for your child (partner, in laws, nanny) can download and share information, so everyone is always on the same page, at all times. As one nanny reviewed:
“you can customize the homepage and put icons for things you frequently use such as: sleep, bottle, and diaper. This app has a timer for sleep, so when the baby falls asleep you simply click “start sleeping” and it will tell you how long he/she has been sleeping…the icing on the cake is that I can send a daily report”
Get it here: Available on iPhone, Android, Windows, Kindle at http://www.baby-connect.com/
2. Called the “Tesla of baby monitors,” Nanit is the smart baby monitor that allows you to watch your baby with a bird’s eye view and also analyzes your baby’s sleep habits daily (in a way that’s not as creepy as it sounds)
The Nanit is a radical new product in the baby monitor category and it looks nothing like others you’ve seen. Nanit looks like a showerhead and sits on top of your baby’s crib. While not subtle, the Nanit smart monitor offers features no other monitors can claim. But my first concern with anything baby is security and hackability. Nanit is HIPAA compliant and all data and communications are encrypted and unidentifiable, using AES 256-bit symmetric-key encryption, according to the company. It has software that pushes an encrypted video stream directly to their servers and your authenticated device, making it more secure than most options on the market. The camera has industry comparable features like night-vision and temperature gauges but special ones too like a night-light and white noise maker. Its over-head design allows its “computer vision” to learn how your baby moves and knows when to alert you before your baby does. It can send you an alert on your mobile device when your baby is fussy, awake or sleeping. Its “sleep guru’ functionality also analyzes the night for your and delivers a sleep report and sleep “score” for your baby to your phone every morning. You can watch your baby from any location and subscribers get access to video history.
Cost: $279 for hardware, video streaming and real-time notifications and $469 for the hardware and 12-month subscription for unlimited sleep tracking data, users and video history
3. Looking for kid-friendly ideas? Winnie – a new Yelp-like app with kid-related ideas is here to help. Everything from hidden gem parks to the closest place to change a diaper is in here
Launched this month, Winnie’s on a mission to empower parents for everything they need to “travel, explore, or even just run errands with their kids. With data on over 100,000 locations…” Winnie was started by a mom who, like many of us, felt like a prisoner in her own home after her baby arrived. Going out seemed too difficult. With Winnie, a crowdsourced app, thanks to user contributions, you can easily find parks, playgrounds and nearby libraries just as easily as when looking up bars on Yelp. You can find restaurants ideal for families and equipped with highchairs or changing tables and users can comment and contribute to populating neighborhood results, so your voice can be heard. Still working out kinks but on a worthwhile mission, Winnie is also a great resource for families relocating and traveling to a new city too. Comments one user:
” It’s everything I love about exploring, my favorite maps app, and review sites with an ultimately parent-forward lean. “
Get it here: on iTunes and read the Winne blog at https://medium.com/winnie-labs
Honorable mention:
Kid Pass – the class pass for NYC kids classes. For $49, you get 10 activity credits (worth up to $150 in value) that can be used for thousands of activities including arts & crafts classes, indoor playspaces, sports, music lessons, ballet, museums, zoos, and more. Check it out at https://kidpass.com/
