Newborn Data Entry UX

Dead, Beat, Dad - Part 4

Swaddling

Swaddling is frustrating and fun. I enjoy the challenge of making a good swaddle – tight on top, loose at the hips and feet. The art of swaddling has some loose ties to knot tying. It’s all loops and folds, with a good locking tuck to hold the thing together. The sailor in me rejoices.

My swaddles were hit or miss the first few days. The good held for hours, the bad failed immediately. It’s humbling to lean back and admire my handywork only for Baby H’s arms to come free moments later.

I experimented with two swaddling forms (triangle and square), and both shared in the failures. I tried being a modern dad and watched swaddling videos on TikTok. Most of them showed either the triangle or square techniques, but I didn’t find any secrets for success.

With a little trial and error, I learned a secret that is working well for me. I’ll share it with you:

Small swaddle cloths work best with the triangle method. Large swaddle cloths are great with the square method.

The triangle is more space efficient, so the extra folds from a large cloth make it easy to get lost. The square is more forgiving with extra fabric, especially when folding the bottom half up. Large cloths makes it easier to wrap around the baby.

My other tip is universal: try to “wrap” each side fold around the baby’s arm, so the arm sits in a little pocket. That helps keep the arm from wriggling north and undoing all your hard work.

Newborn data entry UX

Yesterday, I set up a basic page to view logs stored in the database. The view needs some visual and content enhancement before it will be useful, but I’m switching focus to the log entry. It’s the most important piece from a UX standpoint, and I want to plan a few of the elements.

There are two main values to log: feeding and eliminating. It should take one tap to open the log detail for either. The log detail should have simple controls to add the relevant fields.

Date and time
Default to “now,” so users don’t have to adjust when tracking extemporaneously.

The date is changed with a picker. The time can be entered with the keyboard.

Minutes, volume, and counts
Feeding and pumping times are tracked in whole minutes. Expressed milk and formula is tracked in milliliters or ounces. Urine and stool are tracked as counted events.

Users can enter a number into the field, or they can use +/- buttons for 1, 5, and 10 units.

Today didn’t leave time for coding, so I’ll pick back up tomorrow.