The New Mom's App Survival Guide

As a brand spanking new mom who's not in a circle of new mom friends, I've had to figure out a lot on my own - from conception to postnatal - and it's been quite the ride! Thankfully, though, these days things are a lot easier with the digital help at our fingertips and I'm ever-so-chuffed with some of my discoveries that have helped me immensely along the way.

Lucky for you, I like you guys, so I'm sharing my ultimate New Mom's App Survival Guide with you!

Conception

You'd think that this is the easy part, right? Well, often it's not. There is such a short window period of opportunity for conception and things can start to get really complicated if you don't fall pregnant right away.

I used an app called Clue (free) which tracks your cycle and lets you know when your fertile window is coming up and what's happening to your body as it changes with your cycle. It also adjusts to you as it goes, so try using it for a while before you start trying to conceive so that it knows your cycle really well at the start.

Pregnancy

I was so excited to be pregnant and wanted to know EVERYTHING that was happening in my body and the little human that was forming inside. It's mind-blowing to think about all that's going on inside yourself in order to create another human life. MIND=BLOWN

I used two apps to track my pregnancy and my baby's development in the womb:

BabyCentre (free)

What to Expect - Pregnancy (free)

Both give you week-by-week updates and have amazing videos of your baby's growth through the stages of development in the womb. Baby Centre also has a chat forum which is handy and I tracked my growing belly every week with a photo in their "Bumpie" album.

Postnatal

Once you've got the baby... then what? What do you do with it (other than keep it alive) during it's "awake time". Am I stimulating my baby in the right way for his development? Who knows... I do know that there is only so much that cuddling and oogling can do. I then discovered BabySparks, which guides you through your baby's development day-by-day, by providing activities for playtime that work towards meeting certain baby milestones. I love it. It gives me a list of activities for the day and I tick them off and feel like a good mom. It's not free, though, but isn't expensive either.

BabyCentre also has a Baby section for once your baby is born and this also tracks development and provides great articles tackling issues around breastfeeding, baby sleeping, growth tracker etc.

I also got a bit stuck with singing to my baby. I don't know baby songs and make up my own (they're amazing), but also came across Rockabye Baby albums on iTunes from one of the Instamoms I follow. Okay, this one isn't an app, but it's on your phone so I'm allowing it. It's a whole bunch of albums of lullaby renditions of artists that we know and love. Pearl Jam for baby? No problem. I've personally been brushing up on my Bon Jovi tunes from back in the day (no judging, please).

Anything I may have missed?