Is The Name of Your Product (or Blog) Working For You?
Oct 21 2007

Some of you may have noticed that we have changed the name of one of our web applications from Baby Manager to Baby Insights.  Well at least one of you noticed because she (Carole) emailed me asking me when that happened and wondering if she missed a blog post about it and I’m just now getting around to telling the name change story…

So here’s how it all went down.  For the last year or so Erin and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out a better name for Baby Manager.  My intent when coming up with that name was to imply that the Baby IS the Manager and not that someone could actually Manage a Baby.  However, looking back, it was probably not a good idea to pick a product name when you have been operating on little to no sleep for quite some time!

The topic of changing the name came up every few weeks in our house and then whammy!  The Austin American Statesman ran an article called Gadgets for new parents can ease baby’s first month on September 22, and the reporter wrote “Austin-based Babble Soft LLC’s Web-based program Baby Manager (babies can be managed!?)…”  Ouch!

We were out that same evening on one of our not-frequent-enough date nights and of course the topic of the name came up again.  We now had proof in print for thousands to read that we needed to come up with a new name and do it asap!   I’m sure the waiter at McCormick and Schmick’s wondered if we were crazy.  Erin threw out the name Baby Insights and in that instant I knew that was it because it encompasses what our application does: helps caregivers gain insight into their baby’s patterns so they can make informed decisions about baby care!  Since we spent practically the entire dinner talking about business, I wrote off the meal as a business expense.  It’s good to be married to an entrepreneur!

After we got home, I did a quick search on the Internet and here’s what I discovered:

• http://www.babyinsight.com/ was taken by a Dutch company
• http://www.baby-insight.com/ was taken by a US company doing 3D and 4D fetal ultrasounds

I wasn’t too worried because we wanted to change the name to Baby Insights with an ‘s’ at the end.  I spoke to the owner of http://www.baby-insight.com/, and he was in the process of deciding what to do next with his company.  He told me that he would let me know if he planned to sell the name.  I didn’t bother contacting the Dutch company because I don’t know how to speak or type in Dutch.  The guy who owned http://www.baby-insight.com/ said he had tried to contact the Dutch company before and they really weren’t interested in selling.

I then discovered that http://www.babyinsights.com/ was taken, but it was parked.  I dug through the domain records and found some contact information for the owner.  I sent an email and left a voice message asking them if they were planning to sell the domain.  A guy replied saying he wasn’t sure what their plans were but that he would get back to me.  After a few days had gone by, he told me they would be willing to sell for what seemed to me a very large sum of moola.  Since I have only bought domain names directly from Go Daddy or Network Solutions, my jaw dropped at the price.  I told him I was too embarrassed to even give him a counter-offer because it would be so far away from what he was asking that he’d probably laugh (or cry) right then and there if I tried.  We could build an entire web application or maybe even two small ones for that price!  I told him I would get back in touch if things changed and we got overrun by millions of paying customers at once or happened upon a ton of money, knowing full well if either of those things happened, he would probably increase the price. 🙂

Fortunately, I had speculatively purchased http://www.baby-insights.com/, http://www.baby-insights.net/, and http://www.babyinsights.net/ from GoDaddy.

Add a little time pressure because we had just issued a press release on Baby Say Cheese to the intensity of the whole process and voila a new product name was born:  Baby Insights.

Now if we were AT&T, we would have spent millions of dollars coming up with the brand name Cingular only to change it back to AT&T Wireless soon thereafter.  Since we are currently bootstrapping, we don’t have the luxury of billions of dollars behind us.  Sometimes I think that’s a good thing and sometimes I think it’s a ‘how can I take this company to the next level on my piggy bank’ thing.  That’s a topic for another post.

So what do you all think of the new name?  I hope you like it!

How did you come up with your product or blog name?

Elise’s Family
Oct 2 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Babble Soft web and mobile applications, we have worked with some of our users to create some amazing user stories. I am grateful to the families who are willing to share their time, pictures, and energy to write/edit these case studies with us! To see our other user stories please check out our Testimonial page or click on the user stories tag.

Elise’s Family: (pdf)

Mother:   Kristen Walsh (Web Program Manager)
Father:    Ken Pfeiffer (Engineering Executive)
Baby:       Elise
Born:       June 2007
Location:  Austin, Texas

Web Browser:   Internet Explorer 7.0

Situation

Ken and Kristen recently had their first baby together.  Kristen’s older child is in first grade and keeping up with a kid who is six years older than her newborn, means she has to switch between newborn mommy-brain to elementary school kid mommy-brain often.

When Elise was about 2 weeks old, Kristen started using Baby Manager to keep track of when Elise was eating and for how long. As the weeks went on, they realized that Elise had acid reflux. The pediatrician asked them to keep track of when and how often she got sick to help determine whether she needed to go on medication to reduce the pain and occurrence of the reflux.

The days were full of worry and lack of sleep for both Ken and Kristen as they tried to figure out why Elise kept spitting and throwing up.  Using the breastfeeding log and comments section in Baby Manager, they were able to track each time she fed and log whether or not she had a reaction. They quickly saw a trend that her reflux always occurred during the early evening hours. This knowledge allowed them to be prepared and not shocked by all of the vomit!  It also allowed them to warn anyone who watched Elise during those hours, such as a sitter or her grandmother, of a potential reflux occurrence.

When their pediatrician asked them to keep track of whether the reflux increased or decreased over time, a quick skim of the breastfeeding report, allowed them to see that the reflux was getting worse.  This information helped them make the hard decision of whether to put her on Zantac®. They continue to log her success on the medication by tracking any occurrence of the reflux. So far, so good!

Kristen and Ken’s Experience

The information we gleaned from using Baby Manager has been amazing!  We found Baby Manager to be extremely useful because it helps us remember what occurred last week, yesterday or even one hour ago. These early days with the baby are definitely hazy and we felt very fortunate to have Baby Manager step in and help us with our memories.  We were able to:

• Easily note information on when Elise fed and if she experienced reflux soon after a feeding
• Run reports and see trends in feeding and reflux occurrences throughout the day
• Use the information on her reflux occurrences to help make the decision to give her medicine

—End—

If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Account. If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you, you want to tell the world about your great experience, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger at babblesoft dot com for more information and a hook-up.  🙂

$54,000 ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions
Oct 1 2007

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame is running a competition for his 3 year birthday blogiversary.  He solicited prizes from his readers to give away in a series of competitions.  Fortunately, I found his blog a few weeks ago and donated gift subscriptions to Babble Soft Web and Mobile applications.  In exchange, he will post links to contributors sites and/or blogs.  It seems that he will be running a series of competitions and the participants will have to do a variety of things from writing posts to ??? to win the prizes!  So far he has amassed $54,000 worth of prizes!

If you ever wanted to win a gift subscription to Babble Soft products for yourself or to give to a friend, check out his blog!

How To Create A New Website
Sep 21 2007

We just went live with our new corporate website and since we did it in an unusual way, I thought the bootstrapping entrepreneurs would be interested in how we went about it. In my previous tech start-up when the task of creating a new website surfaced, we usually started with a blank slate which meant lots of discussion and meetings around color schemes, second guessing, back and forth arguments, feature/requirement changes and lots of time and money.   

I have a bad eye for colors.  I have a very hard time envisioning how things will look when they show up on the page (or on the walls of our house).  I’m lucky if my or my kids’ clothes match.  So this time we started with a template.  Yes, a template.  One we found at Template Monster.  It was a flash template, but we decided not to use the flash piece because after the first two times you see it and hear it, it’s no longer very cool.  

Erin and I attempted to transfer our previous corporate site information to the new site and modify the design and realized it was going to take much more time and skill than we had.  So while I was looking for someone to design a new blog theme, I happened upon Swank Web Style by clicking on a link on Mocha Momma’s blog.  I filled out their contact form, and was put in touch with Karen who designed our new blog theme (post about that to come).  She introduced me to her partner, Vicki, for the corporate site work. 

Vicki did an amazing job pulling our new corporate site together in a couple of weeks.  It wasn’t as easy as any of us thought because of cascading style sheet (css) issues, alignment issues, tables vs. layers issues, etc.  I didn’t know this but apparently most people design their websites now using WordPress so they can easily add/modify pages.  Since we are used to the old-school way of designing web pages, neither Erin nor I were comfortable with using WordPress for this particular site…maybe the next one.  I can only take on so much risk at one time. 🙂

Here’s the recipe: 

• Find a template with the color scheme you like on a place like Template Monster 
• Find a fabulous designer/coder/developer who will work until it’s done right (e.g., Vicki)
• Pick some of the most adorable pictures you can find on iStockphoto.  iStockphoto is the greatest, most cost-effective site that I’ve come across for illustrations/pictures from anything from babies to lawnmowers.  They now also do iStockvideo.  The pictures are submitted by amateur and professional photographers and cost anywhere from $2 to $8 each.  The pictures of babies and families were so cute/adorable that for about 2 seconds I thought about having another baby but then reality struck and I was reminded that all babies tend to look cute in pictures. 🙂
• Go back and forth a bit on layout and pictures. 
• Experience a few late nights and Voila! You now have a great new website at a very reasonable cost in a reasonable amount of time!

Baby Manager User Story – Erika’s Family
Aug 28 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Baby Manager, we have worked with some of our users to create touching, heart-felt user stories.  I am grateful to the families who are willing to share their time, pictures, and energy to write/edit these case studies with us!  To see our other user stories please check out our Testimonial page or click on the case study tag.

Erika’s Family: (pdf)

Mother:  Christa (Marketing Entrepreneur)
Father:   Robert (Software Developer)
Baby:     Erika
Born:     July 2, 2007
Place:    Austin, Texas

Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0


Situation
Christa and Robert both love technology and use it to help manage their lives so they acquired a subscription for Baby Manager before their baby arrived.  They started using it about 5 days after Erika was born because Christa was having challenges with breastfeeding.  She was experiencing unbearable pain so she began feeding Erika only on one side and pumping the other.  After a meeting with her lactation consultant and pediatrician, Christa discovered the reason for her pain was that Erika was severely tongue-tied.  When she discovered this, she quit breastfeeding and went exclusively to pumping until it could be corrected.  She used Baby Manager to keep track of her pumping and Erika’s bottle-feeding activities to make sure she pumped enough milk for Erika. When Erika was 9 days old, she went in for surgery and within hours afterwards Christa was back to breastfeeding.  Since her milk supply had decreased while she was exclusively pumping, it was imperative for her and Robert to make sure she was keeping up with Erika’s needs by pumping and breastfeeding regularly.  Baby Manager helped them keep up with all of the activities.  Before meeting with her lactation consultant, Christa would print out breastfeeding and pumping reports as well as bottle-feeding reports from Baby Manager.  She and her lactation consultant reviewed the reports together and looked for patterns related to pumping, amounts, and how much Erika was taking from a bottle. In late August 2007, Christa started the transition back to work (part-time) and will continue to use Baby Manager to keep track of her feeding and pumping.  She already has a computer set up at home for her nanny to use Baby Manager.  Christa or Robert can log in from work and see how little Erika is doing at home. 

Christa and Robert’s Experience:
Baby Manager has been a tremendous help!  It enables us to be very organized with little effort and much reward. We use Baby Manager to: 

• Easily monitor how often and for how long Erika is breastfeeding
• Track how frequently and how much I am pumping
  • Initially so I could see progress on increasing my milk production
  • Now to make sure I consistently pump each day to store milk for when I go back to work
• Run reports and see trends in feeding lengths each day, the number of bottles versus breast feeding, and more
• Remind me which side she fed on last (which is great for those feedings when I’m half asleep and can’t remember!)
• Track when we give her gripe water so we keep it adequately spaced apart 

—End—

If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Trial.  If you find Baby Manager works for you, you want to tell the world about your great experience using it, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger at babblesoft dot com for more information and a hook-up.  It’s not as big as the Harpo Hook-Up by Oprah, but it just might be what you need. 🙂

Baby Say Cheese!
Aug 10 2007

It’s close…it’s close!  So close I can taste it!  We will soon be launching our new photo album/family tree application that integrates with Baby Manager called Baby Say Cheese (version 1.0). 🙂

We were lucky enough to obtain the domain www.babysaycheese.com using the GoDaddy discount at eMomsatHome.   Anyone who purchases a subscription (for themselves or as a gift) from now until August 20, 2007 will have access to this new feature for their subscription period for Free!  So even if you want to buy a gift for a baby shower you are going to next month or for a co-worker, a customer, a vendor who you know will be having a baby even 4 to 6 months out if you purchase now the subscription will automatically include access to Baby Say Cheese because the subscription period does not start until they activate it!  Please check out our coupon page for any additional employer negotiated discounts. 

After launch, anyone signing up for a FREE account will also have access to Baby Say Cheese.  We have also made a few updates to Baby Manager which include:

• Inserted hyperlinks from home page summary boxes and Mom & Baby summary pages to the appropriate entry pages
• Added a copy down feature for the Add 10 pages for our users who don’t have a mobile device and use our custom forms for breastfeeding, pumping, bottle feeding, medicine, and diapers…this makes entering info MUCH easier if you have to do it all at once!
• some minor bug fixes

Unfortunately Safari 3.0.2 has presented some UI challenges for us because it is different enough from all the other browsers out there.  Although the applications work on prior Safari versions without a problem.  I think this all has to do with the iPhone.

We also plan to update our Babble Soft web site but given everything going on, I think that might take a bit more time to fit into the schedule.  😀

Now for some pre-release screen shots of Baby Say Cheese.  The final version will have a few cosmetic changes.

Family Tree

Album

Slideshow (all information noted below ‘Age: 4 weeks’   is optional)

 Email to a Friend (all information noted below ‘Age: 4 weeks’  is optional)

Software Testing – DOH!!
Jul 19 2007

Is there anyone out there who really loves testing software applications before commercial release?  I guess there must be because people make a living at it.  I have worked with QA testers in the past but I never got the impression that they woke up excited every day about discovering all the things that weren’t working properly in an application.   I guess I haven’t been hanging around the right bunch of people.

Personally, although I’m fairly good at catching things, testing & reviewing software is low on the list of things I get excited about.  Plus I have this compelling need to ‘leave no stone unturned,’ which means it takes me longer to test and longer to document bugs, findings, etc.  And I’m not a very technical documenter (e.g., that thingamabob didn’t work when I pressed this thingamajig – yes I’m exaggerating a bit) which I’m sure drives the developers crazy! 

My ability to test (or shall I say audit since I was an accountant in my prior life) software is a blessing and a curse because invariably I find something not quite right and my shoulder and arm starts to hurt from all the typing, cutting and pasting, and moving my hand back and forth between keypad and mouse.  Sigh.  Thank goodness for Bugzilla.  Oh yeah I almost forgot, the blessing part is that I usually find the unusual/hard-to-find bugs which is important to me because I want our customer’s experience with our applications to be the best it can be.  Plus I don’t want people posting all over the Internet about how our app doesn’t work properly!  So Microsoft and HP can you please get the Vista-HP Printer/Scanner driver issue figured out for InkJets…not just for LaserJets!!

So given my venting/hair pulling frustration about testing you might wonder why I’m heading up a software company!?!  Because I find it deeply rewarding to conceive of technology applications that can help make the lives of new parents a little easier.   Also, it’s a wonderful feeling when nothing crashes or blows up and you know the fixes can be handled fairly quickly.  Thanks Cressanda!  Everyone knows that software is never completely done (e.g., Microsoft’s Vista).  However, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that our new application will have fewer bugs than Vista!  Finally, I am relying on the Law of Attraction and sending out the attraction vibes for one of those elusive folks who truly love software testing to find us at the exact right time we can afford to hire them.  🙂

The good news behind all my Testing woes is that it means we are going to release a new application next month!  I’ve been testing for the last few days and we have a few more weeks of testing and fixing before it’s available.   Anyone who purchases a subscription now will get access to this new feature for FREE for the remainder of their subscription period.  Here’s a hint:  “Baby, Say Cheese” 😀

Aruni

Marc Andreessen’s 11 lessons learned about blogging
Jul 10 2007

I think I’m a blogger without a niche.  I started this blog to help build awareness of Babble Soft.  People typically think that I should spend my time reading mommy blogs, but I find that I gravitate to business, technology and entrepreneurship blogs.  For instance, I happened upon Marc Andreessen’s blog a few weeks ago and simply downright enjoy what he writes about!  Marc was a co-founder of Netscape, and his blog raised in the ranks so quickly that he recently got overwhelmed with the time it takes to moderate comments so he’s no longer accepting comments.  He writes on entrepreneurship, lessons learned, venture capital, his experiences and his new venture Ning.  Reading what he writes reminds me of my first entrepreneurial endeavor and all the ins and outs of working with VCs and large customers.  I was even able to contribute a few things to the discussion.  I hope he opens up comments again but in the meantime check out his latest post on Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far.   I really need to learn more about StumbleUpon.  Oh where or where does the time go???

I still have a lot to learn about blogging myself and right now I’m trying to figure out where I fit in.  I like to write about babies, parenting, business, entrepreneurship, women, and random funny stuff.  I’m not particularly drawn to the stereotype mommy blogs.  I am attracted to blogs written by knowledgeable women whether they are mothers or not.  You can see from my blogroll that the women-led blogs I visit frequently are: eMomsatHome, Burningbird, and The Lactivist.

Now if I can just figure out how to make sufficient money from blogging to put towards future development of applications for Babble Soft, this just might work out!

 Aruni

The cell phone as a baby monitor and a hand knitted iPhone
Jul 6 2007

The Browser just ran a short piece on Babble Soft today, July 6, 2007.  Maybe that’s the reason our Technorati rank broke 1,000,000!  See below for the full article…

July 6, 2007

The cell phone as baby monitor

A few years ago, when the price of wireless airtime plummeted, wireless executives sometimes talked about customers who used pairs of mobile phones as baby monitors. (The Browser suspects this is the stuff of urban legend, but a few websites do explain to the technically impaired how to perform this trick.)

Now along comes Babble Soft, an upstart that can turn a number of so-called “smartphones” into a different sort of baby monitor. (Company founder Aruni Gunasegaram, a mother of two, prefers the term “baby manager.”) Gunasegaram has created a web-based application that helps new parents keep track of feedings, sleep schedules and other newborn activities and milestones that pediatricians often ask moms and dads to track. A mobile version of the application, available for many smartphones, such as the Treo, allows users to access their baby data on the go. (Think Google Calendar for the diaperpail set.)

Gunasegaram says she came up with the idea shortly after her son was born more than four years ago. She found herself keeping track of his feeding schedule on assorted scraps of paper. She and her husband scoured the ‘Net for an online service that could help them. They couldn’t find one, and a business was born.

Now it isn’t clear to Browser exactly how many new parents, mom’s especially, will have the inclination (or presence of mind) to go online and enter data about baby’s every move. But Babblesoft’s product does have one nifty feature any new mom will love: It can provide tallys of how much time she’s spent taking care of her little bundle of joy. “Sometimes you think, ‘What have I done all day?’ ” Gunasegaram says. “You can look and say, ‘Oh, I spent five hours today nursing.’ “

****

Interestingly, they also ran a piece called Will the soccer moms buy it? in reference to soccer moms buying the iPhone by Apple (sooo much hype about the iPhone and sooo little time to read all about it).  According to their source, 60% of soccer moms would not buy one.  I’m not a soccer mom (yet) and even if I wanted to buy it, who has $600 + peripheral fees + monthly service fees laying around?!?  I’d rather spend the money on my kids, a day at the spa, or building Babble Soft!  Or better yet we could spend it on making our application iPhone compatible!  But here’s something soccer moms probably would want to buy for their kids:  a hand knitted iPhone!  Daddy Types‘ mother created it.  What a cool mom!

Babble Soft and Rackspace Partner Up
Jun 26 2007

Some of you may have heard about our webhosting issues, but in case you haven’t here’s the scoop:  We have gleefully left our old host and their bad technical support behind and moved to Rackspace!  Rackspace is one of the top managed hosting companies in the world.  I have to say they have been amazing to work with…a true 180 from our prior host.  They are so responsive!  They even called us on a weekend to help us figure out a support ticket we submitted that ended up being a configuration mistake we made.  At first we were like “who are you and why are you calling us?”  It didn’t even cross our mind that they would call us to help fix the problem ASAP!  Oh so sweet.  I like working with them because their emphasis on customer support matches what we strive for.  Check out some of my thoughts on customer support on Glenn Ross’ Customer Service Experience blog.

Rackspace is a living example of ‘you get what you pay for’ and yes it’s not cheap but for our new parent users who are relying on 24/7 access to our application, it was a critical move.  We are currently boostrapping (i.e., using personal savings and borrowing from future savings) Babble Soft so please tell all of your friends and family about Baby Manager so we can continue to pay for our wonderful, powerful, consistently available, new dedicated server. 😀

If you are looking for a new webhost and would like to check out Rackspace, tell them you were referred by Aruni Gunasegaram/Babble Soft.  You will get a discount and we will get a referral fee if you sign up with them!  If you’d like a personal introduction, please email me at blogger at babblesoft dot com and I’ll put you in touch with the sales person directly.  It’s a win-win if you ask me. 8)

We are still working on getting some of our money back from our prior hosting company.  If we can’t work something out with them, you will most likely see a blog post about which hosting company NOT to use!   We have tried several times to get them on the phone but no such luck.  One time we waited over an hour on hold until we got so frustrated we hung up!  After much pain and them completely disabling our site right before and during the time we were interviewed by a local TV news station, we have thpfftd them goodbye.  Yay!

Now for the press release (pdf):

For more information, please contact:                                    

Halli Hollimon                
Rackspace Managed Hosting                                                                                                                      
(210) 447-4617                
hhollimo@rackspace.com

Aruni Gunasegaram
Babble Soft, LLC
(512) 799-8789
aruni@babblesoft.com

Babble Soft Looks to Rackspace for Managed Hosting 

Managed Hosting Specialist to Support Website Infrastructure That Helps Make New Parents’ Lives Easier 

SAN ANTONIO – June 26, 2007 – Rackspace® Managed Hosting, a leading global provider of managed hosting services, today announced an agreement with Babble Soft, a leading supplier of software solutions in the baby market.                                                                                                                                

Babble Soft’s Baby Manager Web and mobile software application is a new and innovative way to relieve some of the day-to-day pressures of new parenthood. Baby Manager, a software program that is accessible through either a computer’s Web browser or through Windows-based mobile devices and Smartphones, keeps families connected and focused on their newborn’s health and well-being by helping parents maintain records of breastfeeding times, bottle feeding times and amounts, pumping times and amounts, medicine doses, and diaper changes. Users can share access to their accounts with family and friends around the world.  They can even upload pictures and exchange notes with each other. 

“A newborn baby is a challenging and life-changing event. By choosing Rackspace’s secure and reliable infrastructure, we believe that we’ve helped to ensure our customers can access our Baby Manager application anywhere, anytime,” says Aruni Gunasegaram, president, Babble Soft. “When choosing Rackspace, we wanted a provider who could work and grow with us. With our product, scalability and capacity are keys to our success as our product continues to mature and we work on creating new products down the road.” 

“Because their IT infrastructure is Microsoft-based, they found Rackspace’s Windows expertise and Microsoft Gold Certification a true advantage,” said Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of worldwide sales, Rackspace Managed Hosting. “Babble Soft is a new business venture in the baby market that demands constant web-to-mobile synchronization availability, guaranteed uptime and a rock-solid infrastructure, which Rackspace provides through Fanatical Support.” 

About Babble Soft, LLC
Babble Soft creates brain-saving software solutions to help families stay connected and help parents ensure that new babies get what they need, thereby making the transition into parenthood a little easier. To purchase Baby Manager or to activate a Free Trial, please visit www.babblesoft.com or www.babymanager.com. To learn more please visit Babble Soft’s Blog at www.babblesoft.com/blog.

About Rackspace Managed Hosting
A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 13,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support™. Through trusted relationships, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business.  Since its inception in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year. For more information, please visit www.rackspace.com, or call 800-961-2888. 

Baby Sleep Ideas – Baby Advice by Babble Soft
Jun 25 2007

Many seasoned parents probably know this: When all else fails to calm your baby down (i.e., mylicon drops, gripe water, walking around the house a million times (with your baby next to your chest, in a sling, on your shoulder, or on your back), putting your baby on a running clothes dryer, standing by the refrigerator in a semi-comatose state, yelling at your partner, yelling at yourself, yelling at your baby, all sorts of herbal/homeopathic medicines, giving him/her a pacifier, giving him/her food (bottle or breast), and/or pinching yourself, try a) putting your baby in the car and driving around or b) walk outside.

Several people will tell you (they told us) that putting your baby in a car and driving them around would create bad sleeping habits.  We finally figured out we were screwed no matter what we did since our son (who is now 4 1/2) was born with the questionable ability to sleep so driving him around so that he could fall sleep would calm us down and in more cases than not put him to sleep so we wouldn’t totally lose it.   Driving around in the car was a much better solution for us than being in the same room with him while we were extremely sleep deprived and irritable (caution: don’t drive when you think you too might fall asleep!).  If you feel sleepy and your baby has fallen asleep stop the car somewhere safe and take a nap yourself.  If you are close to home see if you can take your baby out of the car (keep him/her in their car seat), bring him/her inside and crash on the nearest couch.

Several well meaning folks might also tell you that you shouldn’t take your baby outside when it’s cold.  Here in Texas it doesn’t get cold too often, but we found even on cold days taking him outside for 2-5 minutes made him look around and calm down.  The only trouble with this tactic is he would cry for a bit when we first walked outside making us (or mainly me) worry about waking the neighbors!  Thankfully, our daughter was born a wonderful sleeper because otherwise I might not have survived to write this tip!

Aruni

 ***

As a reminder, these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers.  Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby.  If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted.  If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip.  We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our ‘inaugural’ baby tip ‘everything is relative!’  We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

Baby Manager User Stories
Jun 21 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Baby Manager (i.e., the baby is managing you!), we have begun creating user stories/case studies.

We appreciate that many new parents are uncomfortable with having their picture online or don’t want to even think about the possibility of being mentioned in print or being on TV the first year or so after they have a baby.  But if you are the type of new parent who loves the spotlight, doesn’t care about being in the process of losing those baby pounds, and loves Baby Manager, we welcome your participation with open arms!

If you are interested, please activate a FREE Trial of Baby Manager and get familiar with it. If you find that it works for your family, you want to tell the world about your great experience using it, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger@babblesoft.com for more information and a hook-up.  It’s not as big as the Harpo Hook-Up by Oprah, but it just might be what you need. 🙂  

We will be posting all future case studies in this blog and on our Testimonial page.

So now for our very first user story about the Hayes family…drum roll please…ta dah (as my 2 year old would say)…

The Top 10 Blogging Mistakes by Wendy Piersall
Jun 20 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a wonderfully helpful post by Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home called The Top 10 Blogging Mistakes I Made in My First Year.  Since I’m pretty new to blogging, reading her list of mistakes was an eye opener for me.  They all make great sense and the ones that I still need to figure out are:

4 – I did too much self-promotion

I’m not sure how much self-promotion is too much self-promotion because I’m not really promoting myself but my company, Babble Soft…which at this moment consists of myself, my husband (part-time), a development team in India, and a publicist (part-time).

8 – I didn’t promote my feed

I honestly don’t really know how to promote my feed.  We have some email subscribers and some RSS subscribers but other than joining MyBlogLog and Technorati and sending out a mass email inviting my friends/family to join, I haven’t had time to figure this one out.

9 – I waited too long to learn about SEO

I have heard a ton about SEO, but I also hear to get great SEO results you have to hire a guru who can be quite expensive, and we are all about keeping expenses low right now.

A picture of Wendy

I have signed up for Wendy’s 10 Days to a Better Blog free e-course and look forward to seeing more traffic to our blog in 10 days!  I’m already a day behind and I’m only on day TWO! 😯

I have one more blog post to write today and a user case study to finalize before getting to work on the e-course!

Aruni

Laugh it up (while breastfeeding) and you may help improve your child’s allergy!
Jun 18 2007

Sounds a bit far fetched, but according to recent research laughing results in the production of more melatonin which aids in relaxation and somehow results in your baby having fewer allergies.  They specifically mention that people with high levels of melatonin have lower instances of eczema.   The bloggers at Baby Babble (makers of Stoneyfield Farm’s Organic yobaby products) just mentioned this in a post called Breastfeeding? Laugh it up and you may help improve your child’s allergy.

I wonder if the folks at Stoneyfield have tried getting their cows to laugh while they are being milked. 😉

I happened upon their blog a few weeks ago when doing some research for Babble Soft and have found their posts to be pretty interesting so far.  My kids started having yobaby yogurts soon after they were eating solids.  Now Stoneyfield offers yokids yogurts that have less fat but still taste yummy.

Anyway, what a great reason to watch comedies, cartoons, and have your husband work on his sense of humor while you breastfeed!  If you happened to read this post while you were breastfeeding, I hope it made you laugh.

Aruni

Listen to Yourself: Baby Tips and Advice by Babble Soft
Jun 18 2007

I have been thinking about publishing a series of interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, hopefully useful Baby Tips by Babble Soft for quite some time.  Now that I’ve started to get the hang of blogging, I thought this would be the perfect time to start.  Keep in mind these are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers.  Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tips that might impact the health of your baby.  If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted.  If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip.  We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our ‘inaugral’ baby tip below ‘everything is relative!’  We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and link back to their site!

Now here comes the inaugural Baby Tip by Babble Soft:

No matter what advice, tips, coercing, guilt trips, or loaded suggestions you receive, trust your gut/mind/heart above all else (unless of course you have a track record like George Costanza on Seinfeld and in that case do the opposite!).  In 99% [not verified, just something I thought would emphasize the point] of cases, new parents wish they had followed their thoughts/feelings about a stressful situation instead of acting blindly on the advice of friends, family, strangers, health care professionals, or innocent bystanders.  You and your baby are unique, the situation in your home, the situation with your spouse, and the situation with your family is also unique and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.  So if all the books in the world tell you to let your baby cry his lungs out and your gut tells you ‘this doesn’t feel right,’ then pick him up.  On the other hand if all the books in the world tell you to carry your baby 24/7 and you are about to have a nervous breakdown, put her down and take the break your mind/body is telling you that you need.  Make sense?  This tip is probably the hardest to implement and follow…but try to keep it in mind in between feeding, napping, eating, going to the bathroom, cleaning dishes, pumping, doing laundry, and changing diapers. 🙂