How to use this book:
The opposite page is an example of how your day may be recorded. You don’t have to track to the minute you can do 5, 10, or 15 minute increments or use fractions, 1 & ¾ hours. Do what feels best for you.
- Start and End time: Jot down when your baby falls asleep, not when you put them down, and when they start eating if you are breastfeeding. Don’t forget to circle or check AM or PM because you will become very confused very quickly. If you go from AM to PM for one activity say, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., you can choose to go with the start or end time and call it AM or PM just do the same thing each time you overlap AM and PM.
- Activity: Indicate the activity by checking the box under sleep or eat. If you are breastfeeding, place the check mark in the Right or Left column depending on which breast you used at the end of the last feeding. If bottle-feeding, place the starting ounces in the left column and ending ounces in the right.
- Diapers: You can be precise as to what is in each diaper or you can just indicate that you changed a diaper. In the beginning, you generally want to be precise so you can report to your pediatrician the number of poops & pees. If you can’t remember don’t worry, just indicate a Diaper Change and move on with your day. The world won’t end if you can’t remember what your sweet little darling left you in their diaper, really it won’t.
- Totals: This is the complex math I was mentioning earlier. You can use the notes section to do the math or hand it off to your partner or spouse to fill in. You can do it in hours and minutes, fractions of hours, total ounces or fraction of ounces, or whatever pleases you. If breastfeeding, you can use the average time of the feedings – doesn’t have to be exact – which is usually what the pediatrician wants to know. Just use a system that makes sense to you.