I found out yesterday that the Pregnancy Companion App is free for this weekend.   I was excited to download it and check it out!

Here are my thoughts on it. It is laid out nicely and has some good tools on it. Here are the tools and my thoughts on each.

Tools in the App

• Drug Safety – search a drug and it will tell you if it is safe, if you need to ask your OB or if it is dangerous. Helpful tool.
• Hydration Counter – Keep track of how much water you drink each day!  Great way to make sure you stay hydrated.
• Nutrition Guidelines & Calorie Tracker – I like this in theory, however I wish it tracked moms protein instead of calories.  It is very important to get enough protein in your diets when pregnant and I am pretty sure NO pregnant mom wants to worry about her calorie intake while pregnant.  (and she shouldn’t have to)
• Weight Tracker (Standard & Metric) – Again, what mom wants to see this?
• Kick Counter – Love this, I am a big proponent of kick counts.  Doing them saved my Thing 1’s life.  (I can’t believe I haven’t done a post on this, I will have to in the next week)  So I love that this is included with the app!
• Contraction Timer – Pretty nice to have.  My only thought is it is a little tough to start her “Contraction”, you have to touch her tummy just in the right place.  Not a problem for me, because I am not having contractions.  But it might be hard for a mom having a contraction to do it!
• Yoga Poses – Nice
• Acupressure Points – Great to have these on there!
• Baby Names – Nice list and description of what names mean.
• Appointment calendar – Great way to remember your appointments
• Glossary – explains pregnancy related terms and symptoms

Information Shared

Status Section – This is where it talks about where you are in your pregnancy.  What your baby is doing and what you are doing.  So as a doula, I was really interested in what they said about certain topics.

Here are some tidbits

“You are now one week past your due date.  Don’t worry, first pregnancies can often be a little late.”

That is nice, except it is at 40 weeks, not a week late, it is your due date!!

At 41 weeks they talk about slight increase chance of complications.

“Due to this small, but real risk, many health care providers will recommend that you have your labor induced at this point.”

At 42 weeks

“You are now 2 weeks past your due date…. your health care provider will very strongly recommend thaty our labor be induced.”

Inductions

When talking about induction, the say using Misoprostol is normal (no warnings about it) to soften the cervix, saying Cervidil is sometimes used instead.   Leading moms to believe that Misoprostol is the better one, when in reality it has NOT BEEN APPROVED BY THE FDA for inducing labor and is NOT SAFE, but Cervidil has and is safer.   This is the only thing that I really don’t like about this app.

VBAC – not pro VBAC nor against it.  Sort of wishy-washy.

My Final Analysis

• This is a good overall pregnancy app.
• It has useful tools that are easy to use.
• It has good basic information for parents.  I would hope that moms would go further in their research then just what they read on this app, especially when it comes to inductions and VBAC.  However, it is a good starting off point for pregnancy/birth topics (except the induction section).

Definitely worth it if it is free! I think it is even worth the regular price of $4.99.

Go check it out!