410 – Apps and Electronics

Season Intro and Episode Overview 0:00

Hi, you're listening to Season 4 of the Baby Manual Podcast, the podcast that helps new parents all over the world navigate the everyday challenges that arise when you have a young baby. This season will help you decide which pregnancy, baby, and toddler items you actually need and which ones are a waste of time and money. I'm pulling on the knowledge of hundreds of thousands of new parents around the world, other pediatricians, doctor moms, the Academy of Pediatrics, Breaking Pediatric's new sites, all to give you the best information and recommendations that I can, because I know how overwhelming it can be.

I am your host, a pediatrician, mom, and author, Dr. Carol Keim. Welcome back to this last episode of this season of the Baby Manual Podcast. We're going to be talking about apps and electronics and it's going be really short because you really don't need that much in terms of electronics when you have a new baby. So apps that are helpful. There's an app called BabyTracker, which I really liked, but any baby tracking app should be helpful. But Baby Tracker itself was really simple to use. It's free.

And it just tracks the times that your baby eats, pees and poops.

Helpful Baby Tracking and Development Apps 1:14

real simple to enter those things in. You can share it between different family members, so like if your partner wants to add in things as well. I found that that was really helpful for us to track how many times a day our babies were eating, peeing, and pooping to make sure that they were doing enough. Wonder Weeks is a really fun one and the whole Wonder weeks idea is not really like American Board of Pediatrics approved, but it talks about different developmental spurts that your baby goes through.

So sometimes it's off by a little bit. But it can be really interesting to see that maybe your baby is fussy right now because they're just about to learn how to roll over or pull themselves up to stand or things like that. So that was really fun for me to look at, to development-wise where my baby was at. But don't get too nervous if your babies not doing the things at the times that it says because a lot of these things are not at an exact time in their life. Wonder Weeks is kind of cool. If you're planning on doing baby-led weaning, the Solid Starts app is a paid one, but that one tells you how to do it safely.

So that is nice because it'll tell you basically how cut up foods so that they're the right size and shape for different stages of development for your baby. Depending on whether they have teeth or not and if they are able to feed themselves or if you are feeding them. So that can be a really nice one for baby lead weaning just to know like how to safely do it. And then for moms, some apps that could be helpful, the Kindle app is great so that you can read something while you're breastfeeding your baby or bottle feeding even.

You can be reading on your Kindles. So my book, The Baby Manual, which tells you just basically everything you need for that first year of life, I put it on sale on Kindel every Mother's Day and every Black Friday. If you are wanting to get the kindle App and get that book for cheap, then that is a great time to But yeah, any kind of books that you can read while you're feeding your baby can be really nice because also then your maybe can fall asleep as opposed to having the TV on. Babies do get affected by sound.

And if you are watching anything that's scary or has adult content, babies can get effected by that. Reading is a little bit of a better option. Audiobooks and podcasts are also really to have while your sitting there and feeding you baby. You can use headphones for that usually local libraries will have a free app that you can sort of check out electronic audiobooks on or even regular books

Apps for Feeding, Reading, and Parenting Resources 3:48

to read and that's a really good option that is free. Podcasts of course I recommend this podcast So if you go back to the first season, that's the First Year of Life. The second season is ages one through three. So those podcasts can be helpful. I also really like a podcast that is called Your Parenting Mojo. And that just all about evidence-based parenting and how to do things in a way that actually works, and that it's best for your child and also for the parents. That's a really nice one. where she goes through all the literature and then talks about different studies that were done, how they were conducted, and whether it's a good study or not and how to interpret it.

So that was a really nice one. Things that you don't necessarily need. The outlet is something that most pediatricians are firmly against. And the Owlet is a device. It's a pulse oximeter. So it measures oxygen content and heart rate. In babies, it goes on their foot. it wraps around and you can put a sock over it. so it does tend to stay on pretty well. The problem with all pulse-oximeters is that any movement can make them inaccurate because they're using the Doppler effect. And so if you remember with Dopplereffect, anything that moves will change the wavelength.

and it's looking at the wavelength of light bouncing off of the red blood cells. So it is not super accurate all of time and also can tend to cause more anxiety than it prevents. We usually don't suggest it or really any sort of home apnea monitors or pulse ox monitors because those can cause a lot more parental anxiety. And also they give a lot of false alarms, and then you can also get desensitized to the alarms and not realize when something actually is wrong. So yeah, we usually don't suggest that.

If you have a preemie that was sent home with a monitor, that's a different story. But for the general population, We don' suggest doing any pulse ox measuring of your babies. For electronics, you should have a baby monitor that goes in the baby's room and there are basically two types of baby monitors. There are ones that work like walkie talkies that are just for sound. They pick up any sound that your baby makes and they play it to the parent unit. I suggest getting one that has two parent units and those are tricky to find so I'm going to link one I really liked.

and is not very expensive. You can keep that just within three feet of the baby's bed and then you'll hear it, you will hear your baby cry if you're in another room.

Why Home Monitors and Owlet Aren't Recommended 6:29

So when your babies taking a nap, it can be really helpful because it's just kind of always on. And then the other type of baby monitor are the video ones. I don't necessarily recommend those because you have to pull it up on your phone and look at it and you are probably not going to just be leaving your on and running all the time. Those can be nice to have in addition to the sound monitor, but I wouldn't use those alone as the only monitor. So if you're doing a video monitor that's like watching your baby sleep, then yeah, use it with the other kind that is also just for sound.

A white noise machine is something that can really helpful for babies, especially if live in a loud area and your babies a light sleeper. You don't necessarily have to get one, but white noise machines can be helpful to help babies sleep better at night. And the one that I keep hearing about is the Hatch sound machine that just everyone loves. It also has a portable version called the Rest Go, and it just has nice gentle white-noise sound. But really, any portable white nose machine is good to have and will work decently well.

If you're having a white noise machine, you don't want it inside the crib. Remember, there should be nothing in your baby's crib or bassinet other than your Baby. They can be in a sleep sack and they can have a pacifier, but no toys, no pillows, No blankets,no bumpers,No monitors, nothing else. No white-noise machines in the bed with them. An electric bulb sucker can be helpful, and I talked about that in the last episode about health and hygiene. Some parents absolutely love them, some don't, but I feel like they work decently well and have a good amount of suction.

and you can suck for a while with it rather than with a regular bulb sucker. You just get, it's like a one and done kind of thing. So you suck the boogies and then you like squeeze the boogeys out and the you just suck them again. With the electric one, you could just run it for several seconds. If your baby is really congested or when they have a cold and need to clear out a lot of mucus, the Electric ones are nice.

Baby Monitors and White Noise Machines 8:27

There's a Neil Med one that I really love and there's also a Baby Frito one. We can link both of those for you. Having a mobile over the changing table can be helpful. So something that spins and plays music and has things that hang down while you're changing your baby can a really nice distraction for them and can help keep them lying still while they're there. Once they are big enough to sit up and pull on it, I don't recommend it anymore. And I also don' recommend having it over bed just in case it does fall in, then it can become a suffocation hazard.

Over the change table, it could be nice to have a Mobile. A diffuser for essential oils can be helpful as well. If you check out season three of this podcast, I go through all of the different common conditions in babies and children when they're too young to have regular medicines for the most part. We only have a handful of medicines we can use. There are some essential oil that are actually helpful and backed by research for things like nausea and vomiting and respiratory infections. So I would just go though that season and if there's anything that, you know, any symptoms your baby is having at the time.

You can listen to that episode about it and see which essential oils, if any, would be helpful for that. And it's nice to have a diffuser because that puts it into the air with some water and just like humidifying as well and can actually help to help your babies relieve some symptoms. Things you don't necessarily need. You don' t need special music for your baby. There was a while when baby Mozart was the thing where they thought that listening to Mozart or other classical music could potentially make babies smarter.

It has been disproven. So really, if you want some music playing in your babies room, that's okay. But I'd say overall, I generally don t recommend letting them fall asleep to music. They usually will fall sleep better without it. You don't really need a humidifier, especially if you live in a human area.

Suction Devices, Mobiles, and Diffusers 10:20

If you're in very dry area and your baby tends to get really congested, then a humidifier might be helpful. But what I don' like about humidifiers, you have to clean them very often because they can grow mold inside of them. And then also just having that extra humidity in the room can cause mold and mildew to grow in room. and over the long term that can actually increase their risk of getting asthma and respiratory infections. So humidifiers can be used occasionally like if your baby's sick and congested, but overall I'd say you don't really need a humidifier.

A SNU bassinet is another electronic thing that you don't necessarily need. I've seen a lot of really mixed reviews on that. It's not considered fully safe by the Academy of Pediatrics because your baby is swaddled and strapped into it. The way that the SNUB bassinets works is it makes shushing sounds and it lightly rocks when your babies awake and moving and should help them to fall back asleep easier. I found that for the most part babies sleep just fine in regular bassinets and regular cribs and I've seen a lot of people online say that their kid hated the SNU and that they actually slept better without it and also that it's hard to wean them out of it for those that do sleep well in it to then go to a still place to sleep in.

It does have an app that goes with it as well, but yeah, I'm not generally a fan. It's also extremely expensive. If you are using one, it's okay. it is okay for you to keep using it. But if you have not yet bought a bassinet, then I usually don't recommend going for that one just because of all those reasons. All right, so that's it for apps and electronics, really short and sweet. Next season, I hope you'll join me.

Unnecessary Extras and Season Wrap-Up 12:03

I'm gonna start interviewing some pediatric subspecialists and ask them questions about their specialty, the most common things that they see and treat, most commonly reasons you would get sent to a specialist, things your primary care doctor might do, might ask, may check before sending you to specialist and even some things you can try at home before deciding you really need specialist care. So come back, stay tuned, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already, and you'll catch all those episodes as soon as they come out.

Have a great day! Thanks for listening. Remember all of the links from this episode are in the show notes and you can always go to my linktree which is l-i-n-k-t-r dot e-e slash d- r- k- e i- m. If you know anybody who is pregnant or has a little baby, tell them about this show. Maybe they would like to listen to this podcast. They might find something helpful in here. And if you know any friends who are pregnant and want to get them something for their baby shower, I would definitely recommend my book, The Baby Manual.

It's meant to be all inclusive. Really, all the questions that arise in the first year of your baby's life are in that book. So Baby manual is also linked in The Show Notes and on my link tree. Have a wonderful day.