Archive for September, 2012

Top 9 Free Pregnancy Apps and Baby Apps

Your iPhone and iPad can really come in handy during pregnancy and with a newborn. Here’s our review of the 8 best free apps for Pregnancy and Baby, in our humble opinion.

During Pregnancy:

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1. CineMama - This app was just recently released. It allows you to keep track of your growing bump by allowing you to store your baby bump photos by calendar day!

 

 

There are a ton of pregnancy apps out there, but we found two apps from the popular pregnancy resources - What to Expect When You’re Expecting and BabyCenter.com - to have the best content. These apps will keep you current on your baby’s growth and development in the womb. They will send you an alert every week to tell you about how your baby is growing and developing inside you. It’s fun to have this information at the tip of your fingers so while waiting in line or on your commute to work you can scan these for information about pregnancy and your baby. They’re also great resources for health and diet during pregnancy.

 

2. Pregnancy Tracker from What to Expect When You’re Expecting - Apart from providing helpful information about your pregnancy, you can keep a photo log of your growing bump through this app.

 

 

 

 

3. My Pregnancy Today from BabyCenter - Not only is there a day-by-day tracking of your baby’s progress, this app has a helpful weekly checklist to keep you on track with health, nutrition and preparing for your baby’s arrival! It also has cool videos on birth and newborn care.

 

 

 

4. Full - Term Labor Contraction Timer - Better than a stopwatch, this free app will help you time and record contractions, including start time, end time, and frequency. This is a great app to upload on your husband’s phone as well!

 

 

 

After Baby is Born:

 

5. iBabyLog - This app is great for keeping track of your newborn’s schedule - it covers feeding, diaper changes, nap times, pumping and sets reminder if you are putting your baby on a schedule. For working moms, the best part is that this information can be synced to different devices so if your caregiver inputs information, you can get updates throughout the day on your iPhone or iPad at work.

 

 

 

6. White Noise - Newborns find a lot of comfort in white noise and it helps soothe them, since it replicates the sound they heard while in your belly for 9 months. This free app provides different white noise sounds like rain falling and ocean waves, which you can play while out with your baby and you don’t have your sleep sheep handy.

 

 

 

7. iSitter - This is a brilliant free app that allows you to simulate a baby monitor. All you need are two iPhones or iPads or one of each. This app allows you to sync two of these devices so that you can leave one in the crib with the camera pointed at the baby and take the other device with you to monitor the baby’s sounds and movements. It’s great for travel when you don’t want to bring the monitor with you.

 

 

 

 

8. 23Snaps - Don’t feel like sharing your baby photos with the entire world on Facebook? 23Snaps let you create your own private social network to share photos of your baby with close friends and family.

 

 

 

 

9. Amazon Mobile - Need diapers, wipes or need to restock on Nine Naturals? Use the Amazon app to order quickly everything you need right to your doorstep.

 

 

 

 

New Guide to Green Cleaning Products

Released this past week, the EWG’s 2012 Guide to Healthy Cleaning exposes the hidden reality of toxins in household cleaning products. EWG scientists spent fourteen months compiling vetted data on more than 2,000 products, each of which received a grade from A to F.

The Guide goes to extraordinary lengths to arm consumers with transparent and thoroughly researched knowledge on chemicals. It devised an in-depth set of algorithms (the actual math is available for all to see) to quantify the extent of harm that a cleaning product can cause through its chemicals. To calculate the toxicity of the ingredients in a given product, the EWG created its own database of health and environmental reports, gleaning data from respected resources like California’s Proposition 65 list of chemicals and the European Union’s Cosmetics Directive list of allergens. The extent of EWG’s investigative detective work reflects the difficulty of finding truthful, clear information about household products.

Hidden Chemicals

Chloroform, formaldehyde, boric acid, and potential carcinogen 1,4-dioxane: just a few of the harmful toxins that a cleaning product may legally contain without disclosure to consumers. Product labels themselves aren’t helpful, since only 7% of goods analyzed by the EWG provided completely disclose information about their ingredients.

Choosing to go with a brand or product you’ve grown to trust also fails to fully protect you from chemical danger. The Guide’s Hall of Shame shines an unflattering light on many mainstream products that should actually be labeled “Beware.” Among those that the Guide singles out: Finish Dishwasher Cleaner, Febreze, Glade, Comet, Ajax, Lysol, and Drano. Even several “green” or “biodegradable” products fall short in terms of consumer transparency and safety.

(Some cleaners that did pass muster with EWG? Whole Foods Market dish soap, Mrs. Meyer’s bathroom cleaner, and the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.)

Empower Yourself to Make Smarter Consumer Decisions

Yet again, the Guide emphasizes consumer empowerment. The Guide’s Label Decoder educates readers on how to analyze cleaning product labels for risky ingredients. It also praises states who’ve taken measures to protect consumers and crack down on cleaning product manufacturers, like Illinois and Maryland’s requirement that only independently certified green cleaning products be used in educational facilities.

Both the federal government and the cleaning product industry should be faulted for poor regulation and lack of transparency, suggests the Guide. As for consumers, EWG’s message is clear: practice green cleaning habits, press cleaning product manufacturers for better information, and support more rigid policy regarding chemical exposure.

How will you use EWG’s guide to safeguard your baby and your body?