Why I built BabyDay

It started with a practical problem

I am a father of two. About two months before our second child was due, around Lunar New Year, I thought back to the first few months with our older child and realized that most of those records were almost impossible to find.

Some feeding records were in my wife's LINE group. Some were on paper, some in my notes, and some on my mother-in-law's phone. Everyone wrote things down in a different place. Reconstructing how much the baby drank or the gap between feeds was nearly impossible.

We kept having the same conversation: "Did you record it?" "Where?" "What time was the last one?" The problem was not a lack of effort. We did not have one place everyone could use.

So I built one

The thought came back during Lunar New Year dinner. Our second baby was coming, and I did not want to repeat the same mess.

I looked at the baby-tracking apps already available. Some interfaces were too complicated, some did not support family use, and some required too many fields. Parents of a newborn usually have only one free hand.

The goal became very direct: the whole family should be able to use it, one hand should be enough, and a record should take only a few seconds.

Fast has to mean fast

No one has time for a long form while caring for a baby. You may be feeding, holding a wet diaper, or struggling to keep your eyes open at 3 a.m.

BabyDay puts Quick Add ahead of the complete form. Every field has a default, so one tap can finish a record. There is an iOS widget too, which means you do not have to open the app. I also chose darker, softer colors so the screen is less harsh at night.

When neither hand is free

Sometimes even one free hand is too much to ask, such as while burping the baby or feeding in the middle of the night. BabyDay accepts voice input. You say one sentence, the system identifies feeding, sleep, or a diaper change, and then asks you to confirm.

The current version uses local bilingual keyword parsing in Chinese and English. I plan to connect an LLM later for more accurate extraction. If you say, "Just drank 120 cc of breast milk," the app could fill every field automatically.

No more asking whether someone recorded it

For me, BabyDay solves a communication problem. Dad records something and Mom can see it. A caregiver records something and the parents can review the whole day when they get home.

The current version syncs one account across multiple devices with Firebase. Data stays on the phone by default, and sync is optional. The next version will add family sharing across multiple accounts.

The App Store review

The submission was interesting. I expected App Store review to take a day. I submitted on Monday, watched "Waiting for Review" for three days, and received the result on Thursday.

I later found reports of a global review backlog. iOS 26.4 was approaching, and submissions had increased by 24% as more code was written with AI. My app was rejected once after the wait, which is another story. An independent developer does not always control the schedule.

Useful is enough

There is no grand plan behind this app. The design rule is one sentence: completion matters more than showing off. Shipping, working, and improving are what count.

I want BabyDay to be the app you open without thinking when you are tired and busy. It does one thing: keeps the record for you.

You do not have to use it perfectly. If it is there when you want to record something, that is enough.