Eyes Closed, Head First, Can't Lose

Dead, Beat, Dad - Part 2

We’re building a feeding tracker to replace the paper tracker sitting on the dresser. I’m sure there are many great apps that can do it better, but I’m here for the journey. Besides, an hour of building a day keeps the spirits high and the metaphors tight.

Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose.

Feeding 101

These are the highlights. Well… These are the things that stuck.

• When breastfeeding, colostrum is produced first. It’s a viscous, golden, nutrient packed food that jump starts the baby. Over a few days, the colostrum gives way to milk.
• Babies have small stomachs, so they eat small meals. Lots of small meals. They eat every 2-3 hours. A nurse told us “If she’s hungry before three hours, she’s the boss. If she hasn’t eaten in 3 hours, you’re the boss.”
• It’s important to track how long a baby nurses on each breast, and try to balance them out. Lactation has some “use it or lose it.” The more the baby eats, the more milk is produced. Keeping each side even over time helps keep production consistent.
• Feeding was described as starting the baby on one side for “dinner”, and then moving to the other for “dessert.” Dessert will likely be a smaller amount, so each feeding should alternate the starting breast.
• Over the first few days or so, babies are really tired. So tired that they may fall asleep a few minutes into the feeding, and you have to wake them up to continue. Or maybe that’s just Baby H.
• When the baby is learning to breastfeed, they may not latch for a full meal. That’s ok. A good alternative that ensures they eat enough is to hand express the milk (or colostrum) and feed using a syringe.
• Babies are also bad at feeding at the start. (It isn’t their fault. They just got here.) Early days, a feeding could take 20-40 minutes. I’m told feedings get more efficient with practice, but we’re still in the long, slow feeds.

Where there’s food, there’s…

You guessed it. Poop. And pee.

• Babies should pee at least once per day since they were born. e.g. Once on day one, twice on day two, etc, up until day six, after which they should always pee 6-8 times, daily.
• Babies poop a lot, and it changes from meconium, a black sticky tar, to a seedy yellowish green as their diet changes from colostrum to milk.
• You go through way more diapers than you’d expect. At least, more than I expected. Sometimes it’s one per feeding, sometimes it’s four.
• Sometimes a toot is just a toot, and sometimes it’s poop. But a toot with a little smile is always poop.

Goals

1. Track amounts and timespans for each feeding.
   1. Date and time
   2. Left and right breast feeding times (minutes)
   3. Left and right pumping times (minutes)
   4. Amount of expressed milk fed to the baby (ml/oz)
   5. Formula, type and amount
   6. Urine and stool passed
2. Schedule the next few feedings. (And automatically re-schedule when the baby wants a surprise feeding.)
   1. Time
   2. Starting breast, if applicable
3. Answer pediatric questions
   1. How many times does she feed each day?
   2. About how many minutes does she feed each session?
   3. How much expressed milk was she fed?
   4. How many times has she urinated in the last day?

Non-functional goals

1. Test myself by building from the ground up using:
   1. golang – Go is my go-to. I’m time constrained, so picking a language that I’m comfortable in and can move quickly with is a must.
   2. htmx – v2 was just released! Taking it for a spin.
   3. templ – Compile-time error checked templates to render the htmx frontend.
   4. sqlc – Generate the repository layer from queries.
   5. dbmate – Uncomplicated DB migration management.
   6. Tailwindcss & DaisyUI – Streamline css and styling so I can focus on functionality.
2. Program “live” with screen recordings. I haven’t done much live coding recently, and I want to strengthen those muscles.
3. Be easy and convenient to use. The baseline is walking to the dresser to fill in the paper log after the feeding session.

Here we go.