Bah! Back when I was a young parent, we had to track our baby's processes on stone tablets, that were on top of mountain, scratched with our bare fingers, and still our boy grew up into a fine knob thatcher.
> do you need what the app gives you to fulfill your responsibilities, or do you just want it to satisfy your urges?
There's a third option, which is that while not strictly necessary, certain tools can help make a job easier, so why not take advantage of them? I agree with you about having to be careful about control vs responsibility when raising a kid, but I'm not sure a baby poo tracker is crossing that line.
My first would go for days without pooping, some where around three mnths old? You could tell because she’d get testier and testier each day, till the day, then back to our happy little baby for a few more days. Woe if you didn’t have a well stocked diaper bag on the day.
Even if the data aren’t strictly needed, having them makes an interesting, important but difficult job a little easier to bear.
Sure. If you insist on doing the unnecessary, possibly harmful job there are plenty of consumer grifts you can join that are waiting to relieve you of your money or exploit you for profit in some other way, like tracking and reselling your personal information. There is, after all, a sucker born every minute. Some of them have recently become parents.
But that's not a third option. That's just satisfying your urges.
There is the little matter of tens of thousands of years of human evolution where illiterate parents wrote down none of that and were providing to many more babies than just the one. This is extra ironic because there was no point being made besides "you’ve obviously not been the primary caretaker of an infant recently".
If not, you have no idea what it’s like. If so, can you accept that you had a different experience than another parent??
We’re all different, our little people are different and parenting is lonely. Instead of jumping in with our hot takes on what will work best for another person’s child, why can’t we just say:
“That’s cool. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of…”
We’re not talking about object oriented design patterns, there’s no need to be pedantic and nobody wins if one person is right. This is parenting.
If my late mother had been around for this, she would have thought I was nuts for going to so much trouble to breastfeed, and let me know on a regular basis :)
I treasure the detailed baby book she kept about me, though. My nerdy app data is helping me backfill one for my own son, who may or may not be interested in it once he has a kid.
Yet, you keep satisfying your urge to cast judgment on an internet stranger?? What’s the difference? How are you helping?? What utility does angry expert parent bregma provide to this thread or to the other parent’s life??
It really seems like they've been saying to take a deep breath and not pressure yourself into giving away all your data, and people here are self-defensively over-reacting. Saying that you don't _have_ to stress yourself out by being a micro-manager doesn't imply you're evil if you like being a micro-manager.
I catch that. But this parent isn’t giving away their data. They found a solution that works in their unique situation and chose to share it. I just don’t get the judgment.
Maybe I’m more sensitive to it because I’m a single parent and have faced my own judgment. But dude, other parents can be awful to parents. It’s not okay. Let’s just be kind - parenting is hard enough without every expert telling you that based on their experience with their 1.75 children, you’re wrong.
> There's a third option, which is that while not strictly necessary, certain tools can help make a job easier, so why not take advantage of them?
Agreed completely! We used (and are still using, for the infant) a homebrew spreadsheet with a pen and a clipboard. Worked incredibly well for all 3 of our children, who are all under 3 years of age. No apps here, no thanks.
edit/ And, best of all, we didn't have to sort out any bullshit software compatibility issues with our friends or family when they were in the house helping. There's no data export/exfiltration problems. When we wanted to share the feeding log, nap schedule, sleep schedule, diaper changing log, etc., for our twins with a couple we're friends with who had their own twins... I spent maybe 10 minutes scanning 18 months of spreadsheets and emailed it over.
I agree that "we used to do just fine" isn't a sufficient argument by itself. There are many things that we didn't have when we were kids and even if we turned out fine, they are clearly beneficial (say, meningitis vaccines).
But honestly, is there really much value in knowing e.g. exactly how much and how frequently our babies feed? I mean, if you've had a baby you will know that feeding is purely instinctive, they are wired for it, and if they're hungry they are very well equipped to let you know by crying at a volume that would put Motörhead at shame. Nature (through the baby) gives us plenty of messaging about how and when he needs food, it's just a matter of interpreting it. And all babies are different, so are you sure that some table or general guidelines will give you better information than the babies themselves will provide? And are you sure it's worth spending your scarce energy and thoughts, as a sleep-starved parent, on doing that kind of tracking?
Anyway, as I mentioned in a different post above, I don't judge anyone on these issues. Different things might work for different people. If these apps work for many parents and help them implement the kind of parenting they see fit, more power to them. For me they're a distraction from actually communicating and getting to know my son, but to each their own!
> But honestly, is there really much value in knowing e.g. exactly how much and how frequently our babies feed?
For some caregivers and babies, absolutely! Child birth and rearing, like many things, has a _lot_ of edge cases that most people who go through the process never experience or consider. There are cases where tracking closely on different aspects of baby’s habits or development may be crucial to more positive outcomes for the baby.
> And are you sure it's worth spending your scarce energy and thoughts, as a sleep-starved parent, on doing that kind of tracking?
Honestly this is one of the primary reasons Baby Buddy exists. If I as a caregiver have (or want!) to track some specific details about a baby I’d much rather do it on a device I have available to
me most of the time (my phone) and without having to worry about paper, pen, manual calculations, seeing those things at night, etc. This is absolutely personal opinion, but you asked! (:
We had a baby who had a hard time latching on and lost a bunch of weight after birth, enough that we had to ensure weight gain within a time period (a couple of weeks) to avoid medical escalation. That meant feeding on a schedule if it didn't happen naturally. We continuously monitored quantities and weights to hit that target.
We needed to know because, when we brought our twins home from the hospital, the smallest was under 5 lbs. It was incredibly important for/to us to understand, as accurately as we could how much was going in and how much was coming out from both of them because of how small they were. We probably could've stopped after 4-6 months but we kept it up, my wife liked knowing. We maintain a similar spreadsheet today for our infant but I suspect we'll stop around 6 months with this one.
What’s the value in making parents feel bad about their choices? Who cares about the utility?? Why can’t we just be kind to people in the thick of it?? God, have some fucking compassion…
Do you want me to judge every aspect of your parenting? Do my thoroughly unqualified opinions help in any way??
> do you need what the app gives you to fulfill your responsibilities, or do you just want it to satisfy your urges?
There's a third option, which is that while not strictly necessary, certain tools can help make a job easier, so why not take advantage of them? I agree with you about having to be careful about control vs responsibility when raising a kid, but I'm not sure a baby poo tracker is crossing that line.