Useful Apps for your pregnancy

Since the beginning of my pregnancy, I have been relying more on information online rather than through books to satisfy my curiosity and cope with the never-ending quench for information on this journey of motherhood and what it means to be a mom.

Although I felt that I was ready at the time of conception to handle the pressures and changes of a working pregnant mom, it wasn’t until I became a full-time stay at home preggie mom that I really started understanding how taxing it could be at times.

The surge of information available at our fingertips can be overwhelming, and hence, I’ve compiled a list of handphone apps below which I have used/am using to help keep track of my pregnancy progress and to-dos:

Olivia Pregnancy & Baby Tracker	Rating: Review: Cons:	4.8/5.0 Very Informative and helpful. Has daily tips and weekly updates and dish suggestions for your baby and you. Functions are easy to understand and the built in calendar can work as a notepad or diary to record your pregnancy milestone, to-do list or reminders on appointments. Also includes a Community section to interact with other moms using this app. Would be perfect if they had an option to allow the app to sync with your partner’s phone so that any updates or can be immediately made available to your partner, like how Google Calendar works, rather than having to share each record manually. Community section is rather inactive and not useful.
280days: Pregnancy Diary	Rating: Review: Cons:	4.5/5.0 Monthly updates for baby, you and dad. Information provided is accompanied by cute pictures and icons. Menu is pretty interactive and allows you to use the app like a diary to record your pregnancy milestone, checklist or reminders on appointments. Allows you to track the record of more than 1 baby at a time, and has the function to sync with your partner’s phone by invite. You can also tap the baby icon at the welcome page to get tips or cute comments, as if you are interacting with your baby. Comes in Japanese, Korean, English and Chinese languages too. Functions on the app could take a while to get used to. No community function present. Useful for busy parents who prefer monthly tips than daily tips/ updates.
Pregnancy & Baby Daily Tracker	Rating: Review: Cons:	4.1/5.0 Very informative app, with an option for weekly mailing subscriptions of updates so you can check out the linked posts and videos on your pc instead of hp. Their website at babycenter.com has tons of information for reference and learning on almost every topic possible, even catering for our Malaysian culture in one of its confinement posts, if you have the time to browse through it all. The app takes a long while to load and may cause your hp to crash/freeze. Hence, I have since stopped using the app and relied more on the email updates, which are very informative.
9MonthsGuide	Rating: Review: Cons:	3.9/5.0 Very informative, contains much details on how to plan for your pregnancy, and what to expect during pregnancy and after birth.   The whole app is a chunk full of information without any pictures, which can get boring and tedious. Works similarly to a book, where all information is laid out all at once for you, and there are no interactive options for you to insert your own personal notes, or reminders, or connect with other users of this app. Chances are you’ll extract all the general information you need from this app according to the stages of pregnancy and childcare that you are in, and thereafter, this app would pretty much then be redundant.
Pregnancy Food Guide	Rating: Review: Cons:	3.8/5.0 Very informative on the nutritional needs for pregnancy planning, and during all 3 trimesters of pregnancy. This app provides chunks of information with limited amount of pictures, with no interactive options for you to insert your own personal notes, or reminders, or connect with other users of this app. There are some advertisements present which make the overall layout abit confusing at times. Chances are once you’ve extracted all the general information you need from this app, you’ll be done with it.
What to Expect	Rating: Review: Cons:	3.0/5.0 Interesting App with many blog posts and online news summarised into 1 app. Makes for an interesting read for those who tend to check this app frequently. Navigating the app can be a little clunky, with many advertisements squeezed in between. In addition, not all information on the blogs, news portals recommended and community posts are limited to US citizens and may be suitable for our Asian culture and practices, which could cause some confusion amongst first-time moms. Takes a slightly longer loading time compared to other apps, probably due to the advertisements involved.

Please note that this post is my personal viewpoint and rating of the apps listed above, and may differ from the ratings in Google Play Store as I have not been paid or coaxed to give such a review or rating.