Have you seen our Trixie Tracker site, Izzy Info? Man, we love it. We started out tracking baby data in five categories: sleep, nursing, poopy diapers, medicine, and solid food. We stopped recording his meals in January this year, since we weren't adding many new foods and didn't need to track potential allergic reactions, but we've kept up the other four categories. However, only the sleep records are available for public viewing -- some things are a little too personal for the Internet. (If you must know, we've changed 495 poopy diapers over the past year.)
Craig and and I both thought Trixie Tracker was awesome from the moment we first saw it, but I know some people don't get the point. At its most simple, making a note of a piece of data frees one from having to remember it. Having a written record makes these kinds of questions easy to answer: how long did he sleep last night? When did this nap start? How long ago did you give him that Tylenol? Did he poop yet today? On what side did he nurse last? When was the last time he had a yellow vegetable?
And because it is so quick and easy to enter information into the computer, the data points accumulate, and fascinating patterns emerge. Then it becomes possible to answer these kinds of questions: does an earlier bedtime make for a longer night's sleep? What time has he been going down for his nap lately? If he nurses longer during the day, is he less likely to wake up at night? Should we move from having two naps to a single nap? Are we less tired now than we were a year ago?*
On a personal note, using Trixie Tracker gave me a sense of control and order that would have otherwise been missing. We never imposed a by-the-clock schedule on Isaac -- he was allowed to pretty much nurse on demand, sleep on demand, wake on demand -- so although I had no control over Isaac's schedule, I could at least keep a detailed account of what was happening, and make predictions about the future. It was only the illusion of order, but it made me feel better. (Recently we have begun manipulating his schedule, but that's a topic for another post.)
Another good thing about Trixie Tracker is that checking the site is a way to stay connected to your kid when you're away from home. And finally, it is a detailed permanent record, a real archive of information that would otherwise be lost -- even if it's a record of dark days (and nights) that you'd rather forget.
On that note, let's end by taking a glance at two of Isaac's sleep probability charts, nearly a year apart, to see how things have improved:
Legend:
6 months old:
17 months old:
*Yes, as the charts reveal -- we are a lot less tired.
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Edited 3/7/07 to add:
Welcome, Trixie Update readers! Thanks for stopping by. In case you're interested, I thought I'd provide you with links to a sequence of four recent sleep-related posts featuring Trixie Tracker data. (There are a lot more TT stories in the archives, which you can find if you search the blog!)
The irrelevance of bedtime -- 11/11/06
in which the concept of a fixed bedtime is a joke, as Isaac needs to be awake 12 out of every 24 hours before he will go to sleep
Or at least every month is different -- 12/2/06
in which Isaac suddenly begins sleeping 13 out of every 24 hours, shaking my faith in a predictable world but making me a little less tired
Sleep update -- 1/27/07
in which the world (or at least Isaac's sleep pattern) returns to basically normal
The irrelevance of bedtime, part II -- 2/23/07
in which the world returns to completely normal
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