What to track in the first three months, and what to ignore

Every tracking app will happily let you record thirty different things about a newborn. Almost none of them will tell you which four actually matter, so most people either log everything for a fortnight and give up, or log nothing and then cannot answer a straightforward question at the six-week review.

There is a much shorter list. Here is what to track in the first three months, what stops mattering once you are through the early weeks, and what you can leave alone entirely.

The four that earn their place

Feeds. Time, and which side or how much. In the first weeks this is the thing you are asked about most, and the thing hardest to reconstruct — cluster feeding turns an evening into one long undifferentiated stretch. Volume matters if she is bottle-fed; for breastfeeding, the time and the side is usually plenty.

Nappies. Wet and dirty, counted separately. This is the earliest usable evidence that enough milk is going in, before weight gain has had time to show anything: the NHS looks for at least 6 heavy wet nappies every 24 hours from day 5, and at least 2 soft yellow stools a day from day 4 for the first few weeks. It is also the fastest thing to log — one tap, no thinking.

Sleep, roughly. Start and end, to the nearest five minutes. Precision is not the point. What you want is the shape of the day, and — more useful than any total — when she last woke, because that is what the next nap counts from.

Weight, when someone weighs her. You do not need scales at home. You need the numbers from the appointments written somewhere you can find them, which in the UK means the red book and ideally somewhere else too, because the red book is at home exactly as often as it is in the bag.

That is the whole list. Everything else is optional.

🦘 Buma puts feeds, nappies and sleep behind one tap each, and files the 03:40 change under the night it happened rather than the morning you woke up in. Join the waitlist →

What only matters until about six weeks

Some of this is genuinely worth doing, and then genuinely worth stopping.

The daily nappy tally. It earns its keep in the first six weeks and around the 6 to 8 week review, where weight, length and head circumference are measured and you are asked how feeding is going. After that a rough sense is enough, and you can drop the count without losing anything.

Feed durations to the minute. Useful while you are establishing feeding and while anyone is asking. Once she is gaining steadily and feeding is boring, the exact minutes stop telling you anything you did not already know.

Every single wake in the night. Worth it for a week if you are trying to see a pattern. Not worth it as a standing habit — it wakes you further and the total is what matters, not the itemisation.

Worth logging occasionally, not daily

Tummy time. Not for the total, but because it is easy to think you are doing more of it than you are. The AAP recommends supervised, awake tummy time from soon after you get home, building to at least 15 to 30 minutes a day by 7 weeks. A week of honest logging tells you where you actually are.

Anything unusual. A rash, a temperature, a day of refusing feeds, the first dose of something. You will not remember the date, and the date is the first thing you get asked.

Firsts, when they happen. Not against a checklist — just written down with the day attached, because that is the part that goes.

Settling time, if sleep has got harder. How long she took to go down is the earliest sign the wake windows have drifted, and it moves before nap length does. Wake windows by age covers what to do about that.

What to leave alone

Milestones as a scoreboard. Track them as memories, not as an assessment. It is worth knowing that the CDC's checklists were revised in 2022 so that each milestone sits at the age by which at least 75% of children would be expected to show it — the point of that change was to make a genuinely missing milestone actionable rather than to give parents a percentile to worry about at week nine.

Comparison with other babies. Someone else's three-month-old sleeping through is information about that baby.

Anything you are only logging because the app has a field for it. Nappy brand. Room temperature, unless someone asked you to watch it. Ounces to two decimal places.

Streaks. If a tracker is making you feel behind for missing a day, that is the tracker's problem. Missed days are normal, and a log with gaps in it is still far better than no log.

If your baby arrived early

Use corrected age — her age from her due date rather than her birth date — for sleep expectations and for anything developmental. A baby born eight weeks early at four months old is closer to a two-month-old in what to expect, and measuring her against a four-month-old chart will make a perfectly typical baby look behind.

Ask your health visitor or paediatrician how long to keep correcting for; it is usually up to around two years, but it depends on how early she arrived.

When to ask someone

Tracking is a memory aid, not a diagnostic. Contact your midwife, health visitor or GP if:

• Fewer than 6 heavy wet nappies a day from day 5, or a clear drop from her usual
• She is not regaining birth weight as expected after the first 3 to 4 days, or gain has stalled
• She is much harder to wake than usual, unusually floppy, or feeding markedly less
• A temperature under 3 months of age — this always warrants same-day advice
• Something feels wrong and you cannot pin it down

In the UK, call 111 out of hours, or 999 if she is seriously unwell.

Questions parents ask

Do I need to track anything at all?

No. Plenty of families do not, and their babies are fine. It helps most in three situations: the first six weeks, when feeding is being established; any period where something is going wrong and someone needs the history; and when two people are sharing the care and neither has the full picture.

How long should I keep tracking?

Most parents drop the detailed logging somewhere between six weeks and four months, and keep sleep for a while longer because it stays genuinely useful. There is no point at which you are supposed to stop.

What does a health visitor actually want to know?

At the 6 to 8 week review: how feeding is going, roughly how often, wet and dirty nappies, how she is sleeping, and how you are. Weight, length and head circumference are measured there. Nobody wants a spreadsheet.

Is it bad to track too much?

It is not harmful, but it can turn an app into a source of pressure, which is the opposite of useful. If logging is adding to the load rather than taking it off, cut it back to feeds, nappies and sleep.

What if I forget for a few days?

Nothing happens. A log with gaps still answers most questions you will ask of it. Resume where you are, not where you left off.

The short version

Feeds, nappies, sleep, and the weights from the appointments. That covers nearly every question anyone will ask you in the first three months, and it is little enough to sustain while exhausted.

The rest is optional, and the tracker that makes you feel bad about the optional parts is not helping.

Buma is a record-keeping app, not a medical device, and nothing here is medical advice. For anything that worries you, talk to your health visitor, GP or paediatrician.

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Track the four that matter, and let the rest go

The point of a log is that it answers a question later. Anything that does not do that is just admin, at the hour of the day you have least to spare.

Buma is a baby journal for iPhone and Android that both parents write in. Feeds, nappies and sleep are one tap each; the trackers you do not want stay out of the way; there are no streaks and nothing to catch up on. It's coming soon; join the waitlist and we'll tell you the day it lands.