10 Best Apps for a New Mom

By
Elena @ Every Avenue Life
-
49
3186

I am an iPhone fanatic. As in “can’t go anywhere without it” or “can’t do anything without it” or “have withdrawals when I am without it”. You get the idea.

My life is too dependent on all the apps, the instant email checking, twitter, facebook, instagram, the texting to my friends, buying things off of Amazon, researching a question that just popped into my head. So needless to say, it has been a trusty tool in the first 3 months after having a baby. If you don’t have an iphone yet ( or a similar platform phone), you’re truly missing out. Because while it can be a HUGE distraction (and that’s something we all have to fight and have the self-control to work on), it can also be brilliantly helpful during certain times.

So I’ve compiled a list of 9 10 apps that have proven themselves helpful to me as a new mom.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

Baby Connect

Lifesaver in the first 3 months. I am serious. If you’re expecting a baby or have an under 3 months old, just stop reading and go and buy it ( Ok, don’t stop reading, but do go buy it once you’re done). It’s a baby tracking app. There are a ton of them out there, but this one is user-friendly, has a nice looking interface, good customization options and does EXACTLY what you need. I don’t know how I would have survived if I didn’t use it in the first few months. Before you’re able to decipher your baby’s cries ( and even after you do, it’s not always clear what they want), this app will let you know when your precious one last slept, last ate, when you pumped and how long she/he was doing all these things. There are milestones to record, medical info, pedi visits, play, photos, activities, moods, etc etc.
In the beginning when Lexi would start crying I’d refer to the app to see what it is she most likely wants based on the time, or which boob to offer her at each feeding.

Great Tool!

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

Wunderlist

Besides the awesome German sounding name ( who doesn’t like that?), this TO-DO List app is everything you need. And you can trust me because in conjunction with hubby we have gone through over 2 DOZENS To-do apps in search of that perfect one (our attempts at being productive). With a new baby, things can slip your mind so easily and even if you have an outstanding memory, when you have a newborn you can’t always jump on things you just thought of. Which means you need to either try and juggle the million things you need to do in your head until your brains explode or find a good to-do list system that preferably doesn’t consist of pen&paper. Don’t get me wrong: I am as much of a fan of the traditional to-do list keeper (with all those cross outs and neatly handwritten things-mmm so satisfactory), but a piece of paper won’t last long in your newly crazy pee/poop/spitup soaked household. So Wunderlist WILL save you. It can be used among all the tech you have (laptop, ipad,desktop,ipod, iphone), as it is Internet based and synchs with all your gadgets. You can have the app downloaded on both your and your hubby’s phone, that way when he’s out grocery shopping while you’re home with your babe, you can quickly add a shopping list from the comfort of your rocker while your baby is sleeping and voila, your hubby refreshes his app and he’s all set with the things he needs to buy.

Needless to say, I’ve done it about a million times AND I am so smart that I also have a HONEY-DO LIST on it (my husband IS smarter though, since he pretends that he can’t see it).

I have a million lists in mine: home, work, baby to buy ( I always think of things we need when I can’t just jump on amazon and buy them, so i enter them into my phone), blog to do, posts to write ( same thing here: I think of an awesome post topic, so I enter it before I get distracted and forget), things to clean, shopping list, honey-do, etc etc. There are 17 lists total that I have in this app and that’s how I keep organized and my brain from exploding from everything I want/need to get done. When I enter an item into it, I mentally remove that thought from my head, otherwise I go crazy.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

Baby Shusher

A recent find and a pretty cool one. Alexis is not one to go to sleep on her own. Ok, who are we kidding, she has NEVER ONCE in her short little life fell asleep without what they call “parental help”. And most of the time (ok, who are we kidding? ALL THE TIME!), she needs a lot of said help. There’s rocking and shushing and jiggling and swaddling, and singing and talking and more vigorous rocking and louder shushing…. Whew! I’m just tired thinking of it. Sometimes when my little Lexi would cry and squirm and I would rock her and shush really loudly, I’d run out of breath, my throat would go dry and I’d start coughing and choking (sorta). Not fun, but you do what you gotta do to help your baby fall asleep. Well, with time and a light routine Alexis has gotten better at falling asleep but shushing has always been a part of her going to sleep. This app is brilliant. Some dude recorded himself shushing really loudly and made an app out of it. You can set it to run for as long as you want, it’s this nice rhythmic shush sound and it can even adjust the volume automatically depending on how loudly the baby is screaming (though who leaves a screaming baby alone that it needs the app to adjust it?) AND… the kicker is you can record your own shushing sound! Currently it plays my own rendition of Twinkle Twinkle on a loop.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

Ambiance

White noise at its best. That’s another app that helped us and is helping still. The best one out there in terms of noise quality. And you can make your custom noises like white noise+heartbeat+bubbles.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

NOOK

 

Oh what would I do without my trusted nook app. It’s a B&N e-book reader. Nice and simple. I found Barnes & Noble has the best selection of e-books out there. I made a mistake of buying 2 paper baby books and I haven’t been able to read them at all. My nook books are quite the opposite. I keep reading one after another. That’s one of the more productive things I can do while rocking sweet Alexis. I’ve read about 10-15 baby/parenting/brain/sleep books in this time. Btw all the books listed in the BOOK page are available in eformat.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

FLIPBOARD

My new discovery. It lets you read all your sources in a super cute and convenient format of a photo flip book. Add your twitter feed, Facebook feed and friends, google reader, and a million other blogs/magazines, newspapers, fashion, news, politics, tech, advice-all presented in a photo format. I’m a HIGHLY visual person, I need eye candy along with my reading (hence the million trillion photos on this blog). And as you flip if you see something you want to read later, it also works with your Pocket app. Again it’s a life saver when I have to rock/pump, etc

I’ve gotten some great ideas about streamlining my life from the Lifehack and Lifehacker boards. So be sure to add those.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

POCKET

Have you ever been reading something and got interrupted but by the time you were free again, forgot what you were reading or lost the link? How about seeing an article that interests you but you can’t read at that moment so you pass on it? Or while reading a post you click on a link you were curious about then followed another link and another and completely lost the original source? Or finally you come upon an article written with such an annoying or small font you have trouble focusing on it?

Well with a baby I am sure you have.

You can thank me for introducing you to POCKET. I’m in love with the app and it’s so simple. It’s a reader, a bookmarker and formatter.

Here’s how it works: every time you bump into an article you’d like to read but don’t have time for, you hit read later and it instantly adds it to your pocket. The functionality is built in with most apps and if it’s not you simply copy the link into pocket or email it to your account. You can also install a bookmarklet on your desktop/laptop browser.
Once you find yourself looking for something to read, you go into your pocket app and it displays all your pocketed articles in a nice easy to read format (much more pleasant than the design of some articles/blogs out there). You’re done reading, hit check mark. Want to save for later, favorite it. See a link you want to follow but you’re not done reading the article, hold it and hit read later. Brilliant!

I use it in conjunction with Flipboard and it’s so easy. I have a ton of articles there that sounded like something I might want to read when I get a chance, and they sit patiently waiting for me to get time to read.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

Mobile RSS

This is for blog readers. If you use a google reader to read blogs (and if you don’t, you should), this is an app for you. It’s basically a Google Reader in an app- all your lists, folders in a nice and easy to read format, with an option to add posts to “Pocket” (see above). FREE

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

DIPTIC

Ok, so we all take a bazillion photos of our kids on our cell phone. I am not going to list the reasons why I don’t think cell phone photos are good enough, but the truth of the matter is we don’t always have our cameras on us when the precious one smiles or rolls over for the first time. So we do what we have to do and snap photos on our cell phone. I am not sure if most of you do the same, but I take 5-6 photos of the same subject in hopes of getting a better angle/light in it. So I end up with a trillion pictures of essentially the same thing.
If you’re the same way, please don’t tell me you post them all on Facebook. “But my baby’s face is funny here and cute here and goofy here. Which one do I choose?” The answer is ALL but in one photo. So instead of posting 3 essentially same poor quality cell phone shots to your FB account, you combine them into a really nice collage in Diptic (Or Framemagic is another app). It improves all the photos and gives your facebook friends something attractive to look at. Plus you can do a diptic of seemingly unrelated items to give you photo a feel.

10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

Project 365

I haven’t used this app for a while, but it is a great tool for a new mom. The concept is to take 1 photo a day for a year ( and it’ll probably be of your kid). It formats it in a nice calendar view and later you can go back to see what you or your baby was up to on the same day last year
10 Best Apps For A New Mom

 

What are some of your favorite apps that you’d like to share?

 

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN OTHER POSTS, FEEL FREE TO VISIT THE FOLLOWING PAGES:

 

NEW BABY POSTS (SAFE TOYS, BABY CLASSES, BEST PRODUCTS, BABY LED WEANING, VACCINATIONS, ETC)

 

NEW MOM POSTS ( BREASTFEEDING JOURNEY, BEST APPS FOR NEW MOMS, MOMMY PHOTOGRAPHY, POSTPARTUM, PARENTING DUTY, PP BODY, CLOTH DIAPERING)

 

PREGNANCY POSTS (HERB SAFETY, SAFE PREGNANCY, ULTRASOUND DECODED, GENDER PREDICTION, BELLY PROTECTION, TRIMESTER RECAPS, BIRTH STORY, ETC)

 

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49 COMMENTS

  2. I have project 365. Just started it last month tho I wish I had from when he was born. I’ll def check out some of those others tho thanks!!

  4. Baby Connect saved our sanity during our fourth trimester with baby. I am also avidly using Instagram, Frametastic, and my Words with Friends game, plus the usual social networking apps.

  6. Great post!!! Just downloaded Wunderlist and I’m already in love with it. It’s exactly what I needed to organize the pile of tasks I just kept throwing into Reminder. Awesome!

    I love Camera+ – very cool photo editing app, sweet vintage effects. Pano is good for beautiful panoramic shots of outdoors. Hipstamatic is my photo-processing obsession! It’s so much fun to play around with all the different lenses and films.

    Love your whole blog, btw. Very cool stories! And your baby is the cutest.

  8. i agree regarding the ebooks! i have a kindle and during those first few weeks when i was spending a lot of time holding our sleeping baby girl i caught up on a lot of reading.

    i need to look into that 365 app, such a great idea. my oldest i have a million pictures of but this time around not so much. the only thing that prevents me from feeling guilty is that this time i actually know how to use my camera so there may not be as many pics but it’s the quality that counts! 🙂

  9. I recommend Sleep Pillow! My son always falls asleep to the same “stream nature sounds” and it’s a great app for the car on on the go! I also love it for me. Especially if you are still in need to sleep when baby sleep mode. The free version is pretty good but the $ version is even better. I like it better than the ambient white noise and now I and a deep sleeper during thunder storms, my sound of choice haha

  10. I liked Wunderlist very much! Very nice interface and all the needed functionality os there. Thanks for the hint! 😉

  11. Hi! Sorry if this is not really related but I was wondering what site you use to track your food intake? It wasn’t looseit.com, it was the one that tracked all the nutrients? I read where you mentioned it before but I have been obsessing over all the archives (love it!!) and now I can’t find it again. 🙂 Thanks! 😉

  14. this was amazing. just what i was looking for. no litterally … i have googled iphone app’s for new moms and came up with a bunch of lame lists until I came across this! you’re a life saver! 🙂

  17. this is a great post; thanks! some of them i wish i had downloaded before baby d came along (project 365, baby connect) but are still really useful! thanks! i downloaded an app called white noise lite on my android phone when shushing became too much for me, and i play A LOT of draw something. 😉 thanks again for posting this!

  20. I have an amaaaaazing app called BabyNursing. It tracks (diary style) nursing, pumping, bottle feeding, diapers, growth, food fed (ie vitamin D drops), and it is soooooo user friendly.

  21. Pocket seems like a wasteful purchase; the iphone comes loaded with the ability to do this. When on a webpage tap the center button at the bottom and select “add to reading list”. Later open your reading list and pick whichever article you’re ready to tackle.

    Reminders could easily replace Wanderlist. Plus, your husband and you can sync reminders on the cloud. We use that feature a lot. That way if my husband gets home before I do, and I’ve set up a location based reminder for arriving home, he will be notified that ______ needs to be taken care of. Or, whoever leaves the house is reminded to head to the store for ____________. Very useful!

    The others all seem very cool. I already have Diptic (love it) and Project 365. 🙂

    • Actually I hate the reading list. The functionality and features are just not there. Plus pocket is free! Pocket formats it all so nicely, has archive, forwarding, etc.

      Wunderlist is free too and beats reminders in my opinion.

      If they cost money I would agree with you more but they are free and definitely better than built in stuff 😛

  22. iBaby Log is very similar to baby connect from what I can tell, but it’s FREE! It’s been great for me. My other fav is overdrive, you can read books for FREE using your library. I like the free apps! :p

  25. This is the first time I have ever left a comment on any blog or review site, but I have to thank you! I owe you my sanity. The baby shusher app has made my life and my baby’s life so much more calm. The first time I used the app he stopped crying instantly. It works in the car, in restaurants, at bedtime, anywhere. We tried many white noise machines, this is a miracle. Thank you for showing it to me! Thank you thank you!

  26. Thanks for the app info! Kid zone is also an awesome app to use. Allows your kid to play on ur phone and not access the rest of your phone. Theres an option to be a VIP but you dont have to pay for it so this app is totally free. I have been using it for over a year. Has lots of cool features and keeps track of what your child does. you can add apps into it, so if your child likes Angry birds they can still play it!

  28. I also use Total Baby as my tracking app and love it. Another photo app we use is 23 snaps, very much a format like Facebook but can edit pics a bit and meant to showcase children. We don’t live by family so use it as our online photo album and share it with only our closest friends and family, therefore not needing to flood Facebook with constant posting of pics, which is what the grandmas want! Plus it sorts pics by month and age so we can see the development and you can get books and prints printed.

  29. I love the Breast Baby App by Bedside Clinicians https://appsto.re/us/fj5HW.i
    You can track feeds, diapers, and naps plus they have so much useful info for new mamas who have all those breastfeeding questions. It was created by a postpartum nurse and a pharmacist so they use info hospitals and lactation specialists recommend – like how long to store expressed breast milk and what to if you become engorged. I love it – it’s definitely a must have for anyone breastfeeding.

  30. Don’t forget Smile Mom!!! Helps you find other moms in your area with similar aged babies. Moms post meetups, photos, and questions. Been a lifesaver for making mommy friends!

  33. The Shusher is the ONLY way we got sleep when my son was a newborn. Such a simple concept, and yet a proven way to help my son sleep. Before we found the app, we would shush him so loudly, and for so long, that sometimes we’d get lightheaded, haha! Thanks so much for sharing <3

  35. Your email sign up covers the whole page on monile and cant be closed even after signing up for mailing list. Really impossible to read the post.

  36. Google Keep is the only thing that keeps my life from falling apart! That app that shushes the baby – does it work? Sounds too good to be true.

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