Life's Little Treasures App for Premature and Sick Babies

Image courtesy of Life's Little Treasures

I have recently learned about this fantastic app created by Life's Little Treasures, an Australian premature baby charity.

I have to say I am very much a newcomer to the world of smartphones, having only acquired one recently. It amazes me how much information you can have at your fingertips. I wish I had had one when Joseph was in hospital. Mine very cleverly instantly uploads all my photos and video to Google+ which saves me loads of time, this alone would have been wonderful.

One of the hardest things about NICU is the terminology, and the numbers, lots of numbers, and keeping track of information when you are under immense stress is not easy. Grams of weight gain, mils of milk intake, oxygen saturations, it is dizzying. Carrying a notebook and pen became essential for me, but how great it is to have a neat electronic way of recording the numbers and seeing your baby's progress.

Some of the many features that the Premature Baby Journal app includes are:

• Records baby’s birth details
• Keep journals for multiple babies
• Converts actual age into corrected age (weeks)
• Tracks weight, feeding, expressing and temperature in graphs
• Tracks milestones and allows you to upload photos
• Records number of feeds, time of feeds, amount of feeds and method of feed
• Records total feeds given to baby per day
• Records number of expresses and amount expressed by mother
• Set alarm for when next express is due
• Record your feelings of all family members in journal section
• Set reminder for questions to ask to match the doctor’s rounds in hospital

 And of course, you have that information in the years to come as well. I often now wish I had a better record of Joseph's time in hospital, especially as people as me questions, and over the passage of time I have forgotten some of the detail.

Currently the app is available for iPhone users and plans are in progress for an Android version. The application costs a very small amount, less than £3. There is also a free app available of NICU words, which would prove invaluable I am sure, to any person thrust into the world of NICU.

This news article from Channel 7 shows the app in action.