Baby Tracker® - Daily Childcare Journal, Schedule Log

My wife and I have a six month old baby boy and around the 4-month mark my wife decided that she would return to work instead of being a stay-at-home mom. We hired an in-home nanny to care for our little boy and the arrangement has worked quite well ever since. Shortly after starting the arrangement we realized that we would need some sort of journal to track our little boy's activities while he was with the nanny and we were working. We used a plain notebook for a period of weeks until we stumbled on the Baby Tracker - Daily Childcare Journal.--------------------LAYOUT AND USE:The Baby Tracker is really an excellent idea. The journal pages are clearly divided into columns for tracking feedings, nap-time, diaper changes, play-time as well as general areas for notes and tracking milestones. The legibility in the Baby Tracker is a huge improvement over our standard notebook entries that really ended up becoming small paragraphs. In a few short moments you can summarize all of the data in the columns in the totals section and determine key information - how much did baby eat, did baby have a bowel movement, how much sleep did they get, etc.There are, however, some frustrating limitations with this journal. First the entire layout is about half a notebook sheet divided down the middle (portrait layout). This constrains entries to very small spaces on each column and row. For much of the information that is okay - feedings can be summarized in ounces; diaper changes by a "#1 or #2" and so on. However, once your baby becomes more active and you'd like to know more than "tummy time" under the play-time column things start to get very tight on the page.Another problem is that this tracker only covers 12 hours out of a baby's day. That's fine if the intention is only to track hours while a baby is with child care providers. However, we really wanted to track our little boy's entire day which often starts much earlier than 6am. Using this journal that would require the use of a second page.--------------------WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE BABY TRACKER:(+) Good layout that is easy to read and instantly gather information about your baby's day in a matter of moments(+) High quality paper(+) Consistent quality between the pages--------------------WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT THE BABY TRACKER:(-) Expensive and gets you at most 6-months, less if you use more than one page for tracking your babies entire day(-) The cover is thick but not a hardback and bends easily in a diaper bag(-) The pages should really be bigger. I understand portability is a concern but the current size is entirely too small--------------------CONCLUSION:I ended up making my own format of this journal in a spreadsheet that includes a 24-hour day and more space for comments along with a few other changes and had the pages bound cheaply at a local shop. This is an adequate journal but expensive for what you get and limitations because of page size.

I originally just gave the nanny a pad of paper to write down this information for my little one. She would take him to the park and leave the pad behind - I was getting incomplete/inaccurate information when she wohld get home at the end of the day and try to remember naps/feedings/diaper changes. I wanted something she could take with her and also a way to better control how she reported information. This was the perfect solution! Now I'm getting all the information I wanted. There is a very helpful example of how to fill it out. It also has a pouch for additional documents and a section up front for emergency contact info. Each page goes from 7 - 6. This works for me because the nanny starts at 7am and ends before 6pm. I use an app on my phone for tracking when I'm with the baby. I transfer the info from this notebook to my phone. My only complaint: the space is pretty small - they provide useful shorthand, but it's a little difficult to fit some of the info in the space provided. Also, some of the other reviews complain about the 7 - 6 time format. This isn't a real problem for me, but I suppose if you wanted to track an entire day, you would have to use two pages - not too big of a deal. 7am - 6pm is pretty much perfect for daycare/nanny/caregiver situation.

During your postpartum stay at the hospital the nurses will ask you to keep a log of your baby's feedings, urination and bowel movements. However, when you get home you do not have a nurse to remind you or ask when your baby's last bowel movement was and you are so overwhelmed with the new schedule you can't even remember what day it is. The daily tracker helped us so much because once we got home our baby cried all the time, could not sleep and we were having major problems breastfeeding. It was so bad we had to contact our pediatrician's after hours on-call doctor. Looking at the tracker we realized a trend, the baby was not feeding for a long time AND we had very few wet diapers and bowel movements. This was an indication our baby was dehydrated and the doctor suggested we start pumping breast milk (to see how much we get) and supplement with formula until sufficient breast milk finally came in. The feeding column we wrote how many ounces of breast milk or formula we gave and how long he breast fed for. In the comments column we use it for tracking how much water I drink because I was not drinking enough to make an adequate supply of breastmilk. For a while I wasn't sure what was giving him horrible gas, so I started to track what I ate in case it was a food allergy (we have a peanut allergy in the family). We even write notes about his first smile, who came to visit, ect to keep in his memory box.

My baby's time is split up between a home daycare, my husband, and myself. It is hard for all of us to keep track of when baby last ate, peed, pooped, slept, etc, etc UNTIL NOW! This book has solved all of that. At the end of the day I can very easily see how my daughter's day went and I can look over the days past to see if there is any concern. Or when she is sick I can keep track of how she's doing with that too. There are comments spots on each line for little notes such as how many ounces she drank, but then there is a bigger comment box below where daycare leaves me a little note everyday, "lots of smiles today" or "she likes the new bottle much better." Each day goes from 6 to 6. So I use the left side for 6pm to 6am and then the right side for 6AM to 6PM. But you could just track days if you wanted to. I do both since that way daycare can also see how her night went and if they should be "prepared" for an interesting day ahead!I highly recommend this for all mom's heading back to work! It's one last thing you need to worry about when dropping off your baby, it's all right there for daycare to read and for you to read at the end of the day. And on a side note, it's super cute too! :)