Grow With Me Review

Grow With Me is an interesting app which may be helpful to parents, especially those with a newborn as this app has been designed to log much of the information new parents feel compelled to keep such as data involving feedings and diapers, info given at well-baby visits as well as keeping a working schedule for vaccinations. Birth announcements can be created, and info can also be Facebooked and tweeted as well.

When our son was born, he had a hard time gaining his birth weight back within the first two weeks, so we needed to keep a detailed account of how much he nursed as well as how many diapers he used in a given day. The need to keep such detailed accounts, down to left breast and right breast, written by hand in a tiny flowchart provided by the pediatrician compounded the overwhelmingness we felt as new parents. I wish this app had been available to us; it would have saved us a lot of energy and stress. I really like that all you need to do is select "breast" and press a stopwatch of sorts when one starts and finishes, with the information now ready to be emailed in preparation for a printout to show the doctor. Options include bottle and solid feeding as well. The same goes for the ease in which you can document wet vs. soiled diapers as well as baby's sleep schedule.

I appreciate that this app is not just useful to new parents, but any family can use this app when a family member - child or not - needs to keep detailed information about symptoms of a sickness or medications needed, plus more. I find the calendar to remember appointments helpful, as is the record keeper for vaccines.

The most important thing that stuck me about this app is the ease of use, including sharing this information with one’s doctor. The one thing I find missing is a password option to keep the information safe, some of which may be of a personal nature, be it from a stolen iPhone, a nosy family member who may have access to the device but whom you don’t want sharing in this infomation, to older children, for whom it may be best not knowing the details of their illnesses. All in all, I think this app would be very helpful to parents of both infants as well as older children.