Baby Sleep and Feeding Tracker App

Project overview

We built a baby tracking app for a startup serving new parents. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and nannies use it to record breastfeeds, bottles, solids, sleep, nappy changes, growth measurements and developmental milestones, then review patterns in simple daily and weekly charts.

The engagement covered discovery, UX research with parents, the Flutter apps, a Firebase back end, subscriptions and a content dashboard for the client's editorial team. It is part of our broader mobile app development practice for consumer health and family products.

The client and the challenge

The client's research showed that exhausted parents abandoned tracking apps that needed several taps, a login prompt or a good signal. Logs were also fragmented: one parent kept notes on paper, another in a messaging thread, and a carer had no view at all of when the baby last ate. Many parents also used separate apps for feeding, sleep and growth, so nobody could see how a bad night related to a missed feed.

They wanted logging that works one-handed at night, a shared timeline that stays in sync between caregivers, reliable offline behaviour, and careful handling of data about infants, including an easy way to export or delete it.

Solution architecture & delivery

We used Flutter to ship one codebase to iOS and Android. The home screen is a large-button logging pad: tapping Feed starts a timer that keeps running in a persistent notification, so a parent can lock the phone and stop it later. A dark, low-brightness night mode avoids waking anyone.

Each family is a shared space in Firebase. The primary parent invites caregivers by link and assigns a role: full access, log-only, or view-only for a relative. Entries are written to the local cache first and synced when a connection returns; if two caregivers edit the same entry offline, the most recent edit wins and the earlier version is kept in the entry history so nothing silently disappears. Push notifications tell other caregivers when a feed starts or ends, and each person can mute these per event type so night-time alerts do not wake the whole house.

Charts are computed on the device from the synced log, showing feed intervals, total sleep and nappy counts per day. Growth measurements plot against the reference curves supplied by the client's paediatric adviser, with wording that avoids diagnosis and suggests speaking to a clinician when a pattern changes.

Privacy shaped the data model. Accounts store only a baby's first name or nickname and date of birth, security rules restrict each family's data to invited members, and parents can export their full history or delete the family space from settings. Analytics events are anonymous and never include log contents.

Key features we built

• One-tap logging for breastfeeds, bottles, solids, sleep and nappies
• Running timers with lock-screen notifications and side tracking for breastfeeds
• Shared family timeline with role-based caregiver invites
• Offline-first logging that syncs when a connection returns
• Daily and weekly charts for feeds, sleep and nappy patterns
• Growth tracking and milestone checklist with photo notes
• Smart reminders for the next feed, medicine doses and appointments
• Data export and full account deletion from settings

How we delivered it

1. Discovery. Interviews with new parents and a review of competing apps to find where logging broke down, plus a data-handling plan agreed with the client for infant information.
2. UX and prototype. One-handed, night-time prototypes tested with parents holding a phone and a doll, which led to the large-button logging pad and fewer confirmation dialogs.
3. Build. Two-week sprints delivering logging, sync, sharing and charts, with automated tests for conflict handling following our CI/CD and testing pipeline.
4. Beta. A closed beta with families through the app stores' test tracks, tuning reminders, timer behaviour and offline edge cases reported by testers.
5. Launch and support. Store launch, subscription set-up and ongoing releases for OS updates and new tracking types requested by users. Feature requests are triaged monthly with the client, balancing new tracking types against keeping the logging pad simple.

Technology choices

• Flutter — a single codebase for iOS and Android with responsive custom controls for the logging pad, timers and charts.
• Firebase — authentication, a real-time document database with offline caching, security rules for family-level access and push notifications without running our own servers.

Outcomes

• Parents log a feed or nappy change in a single tap, including at night and without signal
• Every caregiver sees the same up-to-date timeline instead of relying on notes and messages
• Patterns in feeding and sleep are visible at a glance and easy to show a health visitor or doctor
• Families control who can see their data and can export or delete it themselves
• The client's editorial team updates milestone guidance and tips without an app release
• Parents who hand over to a nanny or grandparent can see what happened during the day without a phone call

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