The short story behind the Paige app

Two days after we brought our daughter, Paige, home, my wife and I were barely keeping our heads above water. We’d done plenty of research, but nothing really prepares you for the first night at home with your first child. You’re trying to keep track of when the last feed was, which side it was from and when the nappy was last changed, then hold all of it in your head and hand it over the moment my wife wakes from the forty minutes she managed to doze. It’s a lot, all at once, on no sleep, with no training.

On the morning of day three, Paige finally fell asleep on me, and my wife was earning some well deserved rest. Things finally felt calm. I’m a programmer by trade, so I used the time to start building a small app for the two of us to log the important things. It was nothing fancy, and certainly never meant to be used outside our house, but it helped us massively. As we found our groove I added a few new things to make our lives easier, like handover summaries so my wife could see the feeds, nappies and everything else that happened while she was resting, plus a feed timer. Very quickly, our household depended on it so I decided to make it available to other parents in the hope that it would help them too.

Named after my daughter and first child, Paige is a simple, privacy-focused app that helped my family through the first few weeks. I’ve tidied it up enough to pass on to someone else who’s in the thick of it right now. If it helps you get your head above water too, it was worth it.