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This is the most-searched question of the first month, and the honest answer is that no website can tell you. Published guidance from bodies like the AAP is written as wide ranges that move with a baby's weight, age, and growth — and your pediatrician is the only person who has all three. What you can know is what your own baby actually took, across an ordinary week, and whether that has shifted. That is the number worth having at the two-week visit, and it is the one a log gives you.

That is a clinical judgment. It needs a scale, a growth curve, and an examination, which is why weight checks exist and why Beacon Baby does not attempt it. What a log changes is the quality of the conversation: it turns “I think she has been feeding less?” into a week of actual entries someone qualified can read. If you are worried tonight, call your pediatrician rather than opening an app.

Not on a schedule, and not in a pattern that will look like one for a while. Newborn sleep arrives in short stretches at unpredictable hours, and a single day tells you almost nothing — a hot room, a late visitor, a nap in the car that ran long. Over about a week a shape starts to appear: roughly when the longest stretch falls, roughly how many wake-ups. That shape is the first genuinely useful thing tracking gives you, and it is your baby’s rather than an average. For safe sleep practice, and for anything about your own baby’s sleep or breathing, your pediatrician is the authority — not a chart and not an app.

Diaper counts are one of the few things a clinician asks parents for directly, which is exactly why they are worth writing down and not worth interpreting yourself. Beacon Baby records wet, poopy, wet and poopy, or dry, with the time, and stops there. For what any particular count means for your baby, and for the colors that warrant a phone call rather than a search, ask your pediatrician.

Not for its own sake. Track it because somebody is going to ask: at the two-week visit, at the two-month visit, or at 4am when you genuinely cannot remember whether the last feed was at one or at two. The first weeks do not stay in your memory, and that is sleep deprivation rather than a failing. But if tracking costs more than a second or two, stop — a log you abandoned in week two is worse than none, because you will still half-trust it.

Feeding, output, and sleep, roughly in that order, and usually as “how has she been eating?” rather than as a form. The AAP’s Bright Futures schedule puts the first visit at 3 to 5 days old, usually within a few days of coming home, then about one month and two months. The early visits are mostly feeding and weight; by two months, sleep and how the days are going come up too. Having the last week in front of you turns the appointment from a quiz you did not study for into a conversation.

That is not a memory problem. Whoever did the last three feeds becomes the household’s database, and everyone else has to query them out loud — usually while handing over a baby, and usually sounding like an audit. A shared log takes the person out of the middle: nobody is being asked anything, because the day is on a screen. On a shared log each entry notes who logged it, as a plain record rather than a tally: there are no per-person counts and no scoreboard in Beacon Baby, deliberately.

When the questions stop being about ounces. For some that's a few months; others keep going for the sleep trends. Nothing in Beacon Baby nags you about it, there is no streak to break, and your export is still a file you own afterward.

Yes, for everything you use at 3am, and the free tier never expires. Logging bottles, nursing, diapers, sleep, growth and solids, voice logging, Siri, the Apple Watch app, undo, the Summary and History tabs, care summaries, sharing one log with a partner or anyone else you invite, night mode in either style, reminders, the last seven days of trends, and full JSON export are all free. Beacon Baby Plus is $24.99 a year or $2.99 a month, starts with a 7-day free trial if your Apple ID hasn't had one, and adds 30- and 90-day trends, more than one child, photos and milestones, highlights, pumping and baths, and medicines and vaccinations.

Not unless you turn on sharing, which is off until you do. On a default install there is no account, no analytics and no advertising SDK, and everything you log stays on your device — the app's own Account and sync screen, under Family, calls this state “Off. Nothing leaves this device.” Turning sharing on copies your entries to our database so everyone you invite sees one log; it needs a sign-in, your household is isolated at the database level, and photos never sync. With sharing off, the app contacts nothing when it opens.

Not to use it. There is no sign-up, no email and no password — the first screen asks for your baby's name and date of birth, and you can start logging in under ten seconds. The only thing that needs an account is sharing a log with your family, which is optional and off until you switch it on. You can sign in with Apple there — and choose Apple's Hide My Email if you would rather we never saw your real address — or with an email that sends a link and an 8-digit code.

Voice is off until you switch it on in Settings. After that, tap the mic on Today and say “log a four ounce bottle”. It listens for 30 seconds, with a ring counting down, then reads back what it heard and waits for you to say “confirm” or tap Save. It logs bottles, diapers and sleep by voice, free. Pumping and baths by voice are part of Plus; on the free plan it says so and logs nothing. Common phrasings are matched by an on-device grammar so they are instant; anything unusual falls back to Apple Intelligence on the phone, where available. Speech is transcribed by Apple's on-device recognizer, which needs a one-time download of Apple's speech model. Audio is never recorded and never sent to a server, including ours. Nothing listens until you tap; from a locked phone, use Siri.

That is the entire design brief: one hand, 3am, baby in the other arm, lights off. Bottle, Diaper and Nap are full-width cards in a single column, each at least 68pt tall, so there is nothing small to aim at. Confirmation is a short haptic buzz rather than a dialog you have to dismiss. Night mode switches the app to a genuinely dark palette from 7pm to 7am, with the log colors retuned for it, so nothing glares, and a gentle dim over the whole screen that you can lift by holding anywhere.

No, and that is deliberate. Beacon Baby has no thresholds, no alert states, and nothing labeled “low” or “concerning”. Nothing is labeled good or bad. The only published ranges shown are the faint WHO band behind your baby's own line on the growth screen and one line of context in the visit report (the published sleep range for their age, with its source), both without a score, a percentile or a verdict. It is a log, not a monitor. It reports what you recorded and nothing more. For anything about your baby's health, talk to your pediatrician.

The undo strip that confirms a log is also how you take it back: one tap, no edit screen, no confirmation dialog. And any entry, on Today or in the History tab, can be tapped to change or delete it whenever you notice. Undo is built into how every log is saved, because voice misfires and thumbs slip.

Yes, and so can a grandparent or a nanny, on as many phones as you invite, for free. Open the Family tab, set up sharing, and invite someone with a six-character code — after that every phone sees the same feeds, changes and sleeps as they happen, and each entry says who logged it and who edited it. You choose what each person can do: manage the family, log care, or only view, and which children they can see. Sharing is off until you turn it on. Every row is keyed to a household and the database refuses any request for one you are not in, photos never sync, and you can leave a household at any time and keep your own copy.

Yes. When you invite someone you choose one of three roles: can manage the family, can log care, or can view. A phone set to view sees the same log as everyone else and adds nothing — the quick-log buttons are replaced by a note saying so, and it never uploads an entry. You can also limit each person to particular children. Sharing is free; logging more than one child is part of Plus.

Yes. Tell Beacon Baby how you feed — bottle, breastfeeding, or both — and the Today screen changes to match. Nursing shows a timer and which side rather than an amount, because a feed at the breast has no volume to record. Nursing is part of core logging and is free.

The visit report: a one-page PDF covering the last two weeks, made from the growth screen, to print or send ahead. It has counts of bottles, feeds at the breast and changes, and sleep per day with the published sleep range for your baby's age beside it for context. It also lists your growth measurements and any vaccinations you have recorded. The Summary tab has the same kind of figures for today, the last 24 hours, or everything you have logged. Beyond that, Trends has twenty-four measures across feeds, diapers, and sleep, including volume per day, average gap between feeds, share that is formula, total sleep, longest stretch and wake-ups at night. The last 7 days are free; 30 and 90 days are Plus. Any of them can be shared as text, and the full history exports as JSON.

Nothing you logged is ever taken away — if a Plus subscription lapses, your entries stay on your device, stay in History, and stay exportable. Deleting the app removes every entry and photo from that device. If you never used sharing we hold nothing, so there is nothing for us to delete. If you did, Delete my account, under Family → Account and sync, removes your account. If nobody else is in your household, the server copy of the log goes with it; if your partner is still in it, the shared log stays with them. Either way your own log stays on your phone.

An iPhone running iOS 26 or later. There is an Apple Watch app included for watchOS 26 or later, which logs a bottle, a wet diaper, or the start or end of a nap in one tap; each tap is logged when your iPhone app next receives it. Portrait only on purpose — a landscape layout is one more thing to get wrong at 3am — and there is no iPad, Android, or web version. The app is in English.

No. Feed reminders and Change reminders are off until you turn them on, are timed from your own recent pattern rather than a fixed schedule, and stay silent for the entire time a sleep session is open. An app that wakes a sleeping baby to remind you about feeding has failed at its one job.

Yes, at any time, from the Trends tab: the full history exports as plain JSON with no proprietary wrapper, and can be restored from the same file. The point of keeping everything on your device is that leaving has to be as easy as arriving.

Both Plus plans start with 7 days free if your Apple ID hasn't had a Beacon Baby trial before, and the app only offers the trial when it applies. You start it from the Plus sheet inside the app and confirm with Apple; nothing is charged during the trial. Unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the trial ends, it becomes a paid subscription at the plan you picked — $24.99 a year or $2.99 a month — charged to your Apple ID. The free tier is not part of this: it never expires.

From your Apple ID's subscriptions in the iPhone Settings app, or from Manage subscription in Beacon Baby's own Settings (the gear on Today), which opens the same screen. There is no web account to sign in to and nobody to email. Plus stays on until the end of the period you have already paid for; cancel at least 24 hours before it renews to avoid the next charge.

Nothing is deleted. Children you have added stay and can still be logged; adding another one needs Plus again. Trends go back to showing the last 7 days, but the older data is still there. Pumping, baths, medicines, vaccinations and milestones you recorded stay in History, Summary, the care summary and your export, and recorded vaccinations still print on the visit report. What locks is the Plus screens themselves, and voice and Siri stop logging pumping and baths. While Apple is retrying a failed payment, Plus stays on; a refunded subscription ends it straight away.

Yes, if you are in the same Apple Family Sharing group: both Plus plans can be shared that way, so one subscription unlocks Plus on each family member's own iPhone. Sharing the log is a separate thing. It is free, and inviting someone from the Family tab shares the log, not the subscription — Plus only ever comes through Apple. Someone you share the log with outside your Apple Family Sharing group gets every free feature on the shared log, and would need their own Plus for the Plus screens.

If you expect to keep Plus for more than about eight months, yearly costs less: $24.99, against $35.88 for twelve months of monthly. If you want one thing for a short stretch — pumping for a few months, say — monthly lets you stop when you are done. Both start with the same 7-day trial if your Apple ID hasn't had one. And if all you need is the 3am part, pick neither: the free tier never expires.

A second child is part of Plus. One child is free; with Plus you add more from the Family tab, each with their own name and their own log. Children sync over sharing, so everyone you share the log with sees them. If Plus lapses, children you have added stay and can still be logged, and adding another one needs Plus again.