If Only I’d Known…

by Di · Published 14/04/2013 · Updated 16/02/2021

Aptaclub have launched a new ‘Preparing for birth’ app which offers help and advice to mums-to-be, including handy checklists, a contraction timer, and access to 24 hour expert advice via phone or live chat. As a huge fan of checklists AND an iPhone addict, I must say it’s a pretty good app (…and don’t get too excited here, I’m not pregnant!). I wish I’d had something similar back in 2009, as all the pregnancy apps I downloaded back then were very, very ugly – and usually American! I wonder why they didn’t call it Apptaclub though?

Today I’m reminiscing about those days of pregnancy and early motherhood because Littlestuff and Aptaclub are running a competition where we have to blog about the things we wish we’d known before our bouncing little bundles of joy arrived.

Let’s get this straight – I have found (and am still finding) motherhood pretty difficult. It’s not the wonderful, magical time I was led to expect from magazines like Mother and Baby, or the unrealistically cute posts and photos on most baby-related Facebook pages. But luckily, not long after Ryland was born I discovered a network of support via Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Genuinely honest people who wrote, tweeted and shared their tales of terror as well as their success stories. My iPhone became my new best friend… and here are some tips on how to make the most of it BEFORE baby pops out.

If only I’d known… how useful my iPhone would be!

Reading – and writing – blogs
I’m sorry to say I didn’t really visit many blogs until after I had Ry, and was amazed to discover how many parenting blogs there are (and how many of them give away prizes!) Using an RSS Reader on my iPhone I subscribed to loads of them – All Baby Advice and MummyTips were my favourites back in the day, and now Ry is older I really enjoy Red Ted Art and Playing by the Book. But it’s not only about entering the comps (and I’ve had a LOT of great wins from blogs) – I find them a brilliant source of tips and advice. They’re funny, sad, shocking, helpful, inspiring – and best of all, they’re written by genuine mums and dads. They’re honest, sometimes brutally honest. And they have real photos of normal looking mums and babies, of messy houses and grubby faces. If you’re pregnant, get into blogs NOW. The comps are low entry so you can stock up on baby essentials, toys and clothes – and like me, you might even find that writing one keeps you sane through those tricky early days!

Twitter.
I had barely used Twitter before I had my son. But spending around a year doing both 1am & 4am breastfeeds, I soon began to understand tweet appeal. I really wish I’d got into Twitter whilst pregnant and started chatting with mums at the same stage of pregnancy as me – sometimes it’s so good to know you’re not alone with your paranoia! I loved it when @childcareisfun live tweeted her labour and birth, and looking back I would have given that a go too.

Music
If I’d known, I would have downloaded a LOAD of music onto my iPhone. Well, maybe ‘music’ isn’t the word. When Ry was a few months old, desperate for him to sleep longer than a few hours a night, we downloaded noise. Freeway noise, white noise, aeroplane noise, digger noise – all sorts of noise, to play on our dock. It worked a treat, I just wish I’d tried it right at the start! In addition, listening to chillout music in the last trimester and labour is great. I loved Eno’s Apollo soundtrack – and up until Ry was two, we still played that on car journeys as a guarnteed way to send him to the land of nod (it usually worked for me too!)

Games
It didn’t even cross my mind about downloading games until Ry was about 3 months old – the 1am and 4am feeding was becoming dull, I was up to date with all my blogs and comps and there wasn’t much Twitter chat at those ungodly hours. So I got addicted to Dexter – the Game on my iPhone. Studying blood spatter and searching for murder weapons kept me busy for hours, even after Ry had gone back to sleep (looking back, perhaps Tetris would have been a better choice?) It’s only now I realise how many good games you can actually get for the iPhone – so my advice is to find the style you like, and download a whole bunch for those late night sessions. Games like Scrabble will also keep the old grey cells active when you fear you’ll never have an intelligent conversation again.

And that’s what I wish I’d known whilst I was pregnant – how useful an iPhone can be! And as your baby gets older, you’ll find more and more apps and games to entertain them. The only problem is – as soon as they learn how to use it, you’re in danger of never getting it back…

This post is Di’s entry into the Aptaclub ‘If Only I’d Known…’ competition