Use Any Planner to Track Your Baby's Daily Schedule
Mama Loves a Schedule
After having our first little one this past year, I hit a learning curve with all of the things a new mom has to keep track of and record. Being a person who loves planning, I was obsessed with learning about schedules, wake windows, bottle timings, night wakings, and more. I found out immediately that schedules and sleep were linked. This caused me to become hyper-focused on how to get our little one on a schedule because sleep was the key to functioning again. I ran to a well-known app that worked perfectly for the first 8 months. An app on my phone was great because I could track feedings, pumping, diaper changes, and sleep patterns all in one spot. I also had a report that would come to my inbox weekly when we were updating our pediatrician on how things were going. Apps are amazing things, really.
Then, our little one started daycare, and it wasn’t feasible or practical to have the daycare use our tracking system, and it was too tedious to try to keep entering in the day’s information all at once. I was exhausted after work, and I didn’t want to feel like I had one more chore to do at the end of the day. I was also finally moving to a place where I was more “go with the flow” and didn’t feel the need to track every minute of our little one’s day. I have always been an analog person. I love the feel of paper when it comes to both journaling and reading books. I get why other people enjoy the other mediums, but when I was faced with how I keep track of our little girl’s schedule in a new way, I immediately ran back to paper. This post outlines how you can use any bullet journaling or planning system to keep track of your young one’s day. I go into detail about what I track, how I track those items and some setups that might work for you.
What Do I Need to Track?
When I started using the baby app to track everything, I loved that I could easily track feedings, sleep, and diaper changes. You can also specify with just a tap of a button the types of diapers or food solids easily. If you need detail, an app like this might work better for you. If I were to do this all over again, I think I would still use an app at first and then eventually move to paper. I loved the weekly reports, and I felt like I was getting to know our little one better. I was helping her figure out schedules for eating and sleeping. As a new mom, it was hard to keep track of everything and also feel like I had any idea of what I was doing. Like her, I became more comfortable over time with the routine and how things worked. I continue to track many of the same things, but I do not need as much detail as before.
Items to Track:
Feedings: Ounces/Total Ounces (If breastfeeding, you could also track duration and sides)
Diaper Changes/Type
Naps/Overnight Sleep (I am still tracking overnight sleep to keep track of night wakings and periods of sleep regression)
You may want to track solids as well, but I find it helpful to keep track of this in the back of my journal rather than in the day-to-day schedule. I also like to keep the opposite page handy with sticky notes for keeping track of information needed for appointments. I write all of my questions down in one place, and then I can easily see where we are at with feedings. When we have a new appointment, I replace the sticky notes.
What System Do I Use?
You can use any notebook or planner when switching to analog tracking for baby. I have included images from my standard bullet journal setups and my Passion Planner Weekly Academic Setup. I find it is most helpful to figure out what style of tracking you want before determining what system works best for you. For example, during the day, I ask anyone else watching little girl to simply write down the times of bottles with ounces, record diaper changes and times, and then record nap times. I transfer this to my system, but you could easily just record this information for yourself.
The system I like best for this is a Daily or Weekly Passion Planner because the times are already written in the setup. I can simply circle a time and then insert what I want to track into the column. The system that is working best for me right now is to have a space in my Passion Planner to record baby information and then have my schedule right next to it for comparison. Currently, I am moving between my Chic Sparrow cover/Archer & Olive Traveler’s Notebook size journal and my Passion Planner. I am finding it is a lot to carry, but I like the two things separated. I may in the future move to a Daily Passion Planner so I can do my planning and journaling in one spot.
Overview of my Passion Planner System:
How Do I Setup My Tracking Pages?
A traditional bullet journal system might require you to have more frontloading with setup, but some people may find this more appealing. Drawing and doodling is a form of art therapy, and even now I love to use stickers, but there is a part of me that misses the different themes each month in my standard bullet journal. Above, I talked about having the times written in the layouts for the Passion Planner, but you could easily add these times into your bullet journal for a similar setup.
The first setup maybe a quick jotting of daily information for baby, while the second setup would look more like the Passion Planner. Bullet journaling as a system is always more flexible and allows you to integrate your life with your schedule. This has been one of the main reasons I come back to bullet journaling time and time again.
Using a Passion Planner, I can adapt the Passion Planner system to help me keep track of the baby’s needs. I like to track overnight sleep and wakings from the previous night in the Daily Focus box. This is helping me figure out when our little girl is waking up, and if we need to adjust anything during the day. I divide each daily column in half: One side for her and one side for me. Then, at the bottom, I tally up the number of bottle ounces for each day. This helps me see at a glance if she is getting enough milk or if she would need more before bedtime to try to make it through the night without a night waking.
What Else Should I Include?
Anything you want! Using either the bullet journaling system or a Passion Planner allows you to insert creativity into your layout. I love that I can add things like gratitudes, self-care challenges, stickers and doodles, and quotes or sayings into my layouts.
Some ideas:
Mama affirmations (Click here for a list of over 100 of them)
Meal plan for family and or baby
Daily mantra or focus
Self-Care strategies and ideas
Reading list
Shopping list