Apps for Preemie Parents to help during their NICU journey
With all of today's technology and apps for almost everything, we are happy to introduce you to two that are here to help preemie parents during their journey through the NICU.
The first one is from the March of Dimes and it is called My NICU Baby App.
The March of Dimes does not want parents to feel alone. Here are the details regarding this app:
ANSWERS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Use My NICU Baby to do things like:
- Get tips and helpful videos to care for your baby in the NICU and at home
- Track breastfeeding sessions and baby's weight
- Track breast pumping and kangaroo care
- Take photos and add filters
- Connect with other families with similar experiences
- Create a customizable checklist to prepare to take your baby home
SUPPORTING YOUR NICU JOURNEY
March of Dimes helps moms and families through every stage of pregnancy and throughout the NICU journey. It's what we do. My NICU Baby App is available whenever you need it to provide peace of mind, support and information at your fingertips. It's been developed to help parents cope with a baby's early birth, complications like birth defects and other issues that may affect a baby in the NICUCreated by experts and parents and designed to inform, comfort, organize, and engage, the MyPreemie app for preemie families promotes parent well-being and engagement in the NICU and beyond.
The second app is offered from Graham's Foundation
The app has 6 sections:
- A Pocket Guide to Preemies covers a multitude of health and developmental issues. Topics like “Interacting with a preemie,” “Feeding difficulties,” “Early childhood intervention,” and “Home g-tube feeding” can introduce a parent to a difficult topic or underline points we’ve discussed with them.
- A Remember To Ask List. Each topic in the Pocket Guide comes with several “Suggested Questions” that parents can select and transfer with one click to this To Ask list (or they can type in their own). This handy list not only helps parents communicate with us, but we can also use it to help them phrase questions for the doctor about medical issues related to our treatment plans, making sure the family clearly and accurately expresses concerns.
- A Remember To Do List helps keep tasks organized, including, for example, our therapeutic interventions, recommendations, and tips. We all know how overwhelmed NICU parents often feel, making it harder to focus and remember. Therapists can help parents keep their list updated, ensuring that action plans are correct and complete. (And wow – this will help with consistency.)
- A beautiful Diary, with prompts focusing on typical preemie experiences and parents’ feelings, helps celebrate a baby’s progress and keep a record of when achievements or other events occur. Therapists can assist parents by flagging:* events that happened for the first time* progress or a setback* developmental or medical milestones parents can update or look forward to (and more!)Working on the diary together will not only help ensure that the therapist and parent are “on the same page” regarding how the baby is doing, but also enhance bonding and reinforce that even the tiniest step can be tremendous progress for a preemie.
- A Trackers section allows parents to log their baby’s daily weight, length, and head circumference and see them plotted on premature infant growth charts. This engages parents in gathering key data and participating in treatment decisions as well as promoting collaboration.
- Treasured Mementos offers a list of items from a preemie’s early days that parents are encouraged to gather as keepsakes. By helping parents add to the list, therapists are able to give them precious memories to cherish in the future, demonstrating more than ever our understanding and commitment to them and their baby.
Here is a screenshot of the Graham's Foundation app. We love the cute illustrations incorporated in this app.
We hope you find one of these resources helpful during your NICU journey. We would love to hear from you, tell us what you found to be your favorite one, and why.
Thank you for reading along with us,
Cressie
We would like to highlight three resources we used to gather this information for you:
Sue Ludwig wrote a great review about the Graham's Foundation App and gave us the 6 breakdowns, to read more of her review.
For more information regarding the March of Dimes App please check out their website here.
Graham's Foundation link to their wonderful resources, click here.
