If you have had a baby in the last few years, chances are someone recommended a baby tracking app before you even left the hospital. Log every feeding. Record every diaper. Track every nap. Chart the ounces, the minutes, the side. It feels responsible. It feels like good parenting.
But a 2023 study published in a peer-reviewed journal raises a question worth sitting with: what if all that tracking is making things worse?
What the Study Found
Researchers at the University of Warwick published a study examining how the use of baby tracking apps affected the mental health of new mothers. The findings were striking.
Mothers who used all-in-one tracking apps intensively, logging multiple types of data across feeding, sleep, diapers, growth, and more, reported significantly higher rates of:
- Postpartum anxiety
- Postpartum depression
- OCD-like symptoms related to baby care
The same study found that intensive trackers also reported a weaker instinctive bond with their babies. The researchers concluded that heavy data logging pulled mothers away from reading their baby's cues and toward reading a screen instead.
By contrast, mothers who tracked minimally, or not at all, reported significantly better mental health outcomes and stronger maternal bonds.
You can read the full study here: Baby tracking apps and maternal mental health (PMC, 2023).
Why This Happens
The mechanism is not hard to understand. When you are sleep-deprived, hormonally in flux, and responsible for keeping a tiny human alive, data can feel like control. If you can measure everything, maybe you can solve everything. Maybe you can predict the next wake window, prevent the next crying spell, optimize the feeding schedule.
But babies are not optimizable. They are unpredictable by nature, and the gap between what the data says should happen and what is actually happening becomes a source of constant low-grade stress. Every deviation from the chart becomes something to worry about. Every missed nap becomes a data point to analyze.
There is also a subtler cost. Every moment spent logging is a moment not spent just being with your baby. The researchers noted that intensive trackers were less likely to respond to their baby's signals intuitively and more likely to consult the app first. Over time, this erodes confidence. You stop trusting yourself and start trusting the app instead.
The Tracking That Actually Helps
The study did not conclude that all tracking is bad. It identified a difference between tracking that reduces cognitive load and tracking that increases it.
Tracking that reduces cognitive load answers a simple question your exhausted brain cannot hold onto: which side did I feed from last? How long has it been? Those two facts are genuinely hard to remember at 3am after four weeks of broken sleep. An app that answers those two questions and stops there is helping. It is offloading something your brain cannot carry.
Tracking that increases cognitive load turns parenting into a data management project. It creates a permanent to-do list. It surfaces comparisons and benchmarks. It introduces new categories of worry that never would have existed otherwise. "She only slept for 38 minutes but the app says she should sleep 45 to 90 minutes." That sentence could only exist if someone built an app that encouraged you to track and compare sleep.
What to Do With This
If you are currently using a full baby tracker and it is working for you, that is genuinely fine. The research describes population-level trends, not individual outcomes. Some mothers find comprehensive tracking reassuring. You know yourself.
But if you find yourself:
- Feeling anxious when you forget to log something
- Checking the app during feedings instead of looking at your baby
- Comparing your baby's data to charts or averages and worrying about the gaps
- Feeling like the data is running you rather than helping you
It might be worth trying something different. Delete the app for a week. See how it feels. You might discover that the main thing you actually needed to know was which side and how long ago, and that the rest was noise you were generating yourself.
The Idea Behind LatchTime
LatchTime exists because of this research. It tracks exactly two things: which breast you fed from last, and how long ago the last feeding was. There is an optional bottle log if you need it. That is the whole app.
Not because tracking is bad, but because the right amount of tracking is the amount that helps without adding to the mental load you are already carrying. Breastfeeding is hard enough. The last thing a new mother needs is another source of data to manage.
If you are looking for something simpler, LatchTime is on the App Store. No subscription, no ads, no account required.
Reference: Petri E, et al. "Baby tracking app usage and its association with maternal mental health and bonding." PMC10604718, 2023.