I have a few friends asking about this when I talk about my experience with handling a newborn and trying to keep tabs on all the minor (but highly important) activities of the first few weeks of a new born’s life - so here it is.  My “Newborn Baby Log”.  What it is is basically an hour-by-hour play of key activities you’d expect or like to track from your newborn.  The file was created in Microsoft Excel (so sorry for those who want open source, but I’d be happen to convert it for you - just let me know).

The features includes:

• Feeding duration and amount (both breast and formula)
• Diaper count (both pee and poop)
• Notes (for additional medicine - like the Vitamin D some Canadian doctors recommend)
• One page per week
• Hour by hour tracking

What you do is basically print out how ever many weeks you’d like to keep track.  I did about 8 weeks for both daughters and would mark at what time they started breastfeeding to what time they finished by stroking lines across the hour marks.  I would also make X’s at the times their diaper would be substantial to be counted as a diaper count.  Because I am an over tired and over paranoid parent, this “Newborn Baby Log” would help me with ensuring their diaper count was sufficient, given solid and accurate information to the pediatrician during those frequent visits and not force me to remember this information in my head when my role as a new parent was already occupying much of my brain power.

So I’m going to share this with whoever wants it.  I found it extremely useful (because you know your pediatrician WILL ask you for a diaper count per day) and it also helped with trying to learn how to breastfeed (by giving information to the home nurse that Ontario Health so kindly provides).

Download it here:  ”Newborn Baby Log”

Hope this helps all those new parents out there!  It certainly helped me bundles!  Oh yah, congratulations