It’s been a while since I’ve shared a Parent Story and now we have a great one! I met this fabulous mom (Kerry Reynolds), who also happens to be a doula, on twitter. I was introduced to her by none other than her mother, Susan Reynolds, of Frozen Pea Fund and Boobs on Ice fame! Check out the post I did on the Frozen Pea Fund back in December 2007.
Stories like these are what keep me going and and make all the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur building Babble Soft all worth while!
Mother: Kerry (SAHM/Birth Doula)
Father: Mike (Project Manager)
Baby: Emma
Born: April 2008
Place: Burke, VA
Browser: Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11
Website: www.birthinbloom.com
Kerry’s story
Emma is my second child and her birth was long awaited as she was seven days overdue! Labor lasted 20 hours and was exhausting. In the process I was up for 50 hours straight and was so ready to come home. After Emma was born we brought her to her first doctor’s appointment only to discover she had a worrisome case of baby jaundice. We were concerned about her health and the doctor told us to make sure we kept careful watch of her weight gain, feedings, and diapers. We were very worried about little Emma but little did we know at that time, jaundice would be the least of our concerns.
When Emma was one and a half weeks old she had a frightening episode which resulted in a trip to the emergency room. We discovered she has a heart condition called Wolffe Parkinson White and learned she would need to be on a heart medication until she reaches three years old, when her heart will be large enough to have a surgery to correct the defect. After three nights in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) we arrived home frantic and sleep deprived, her medication schedule had to be so exact that we needed Baby Insights to help us keep track of every detail of her routine. In addition, her dosage was on a schedule to increase as her weight increased so it was imperative that we monitor it closely.
Babble Soft helped us through some challenging times
The information I got from using Baby Insights was and continues to be extremely useful! It helped us think in a time we could barely add two plus two or string coherent sentences together. The ability to go to one place and see all of Emma’s information was a life saver. I use Baby Insights to:
- Keep detailed notes on how often and when she was eating, which helped us track improvements in her jaundice and report feedings to her pediatrician and cardiologist.
- Monitor her diaper changes so that we could feel comfortable she was in fact absorbing her food and that all was working well.
- Monitor her heart medication which helped us remember the exact time and dosage as that is a critical part of keeping any further episodes at bay.
- Keep track of how much breast milk I was pumping to make sure we had enough to give to baby Emma and to ensure my milk supply would stay steady and increase over time.
- Stay aware of any decreases in her appetite as this could be a sign of another episode with her heart.
—End—
If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Trial. All you need is an email address! If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you and you want to tell the world about your great experience, please email us at info at babblesoft dot com for more information.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby insights,
breast milk,
breastfeeding,
case study,
parent stories,
parenting,
pumping |
Tags: babble soft parent testimonial,
baby heart condition,
baby is overdue,
baby jaundice,
birth in bloom,
firefox,
jaundice,
susan reynolds,
Wolffe Parkinson White |
4 Comments »
Just over a year ago, we officially launched Babble Soft’s first web and mobile application (then called Baby Manager, now called Baby Insights). A prominent blogger, Jennifer Laycock, whose personal blog is called The Lactivist, a popular blog on breastfeeding, saw the release and created a post that made me feel shocked, anxious, depressed, angry, and misunderstood at the same time. Jennifer also happens to be the founder, editor, and a writer for Search Engine Guide, a widely read blog on all things search.
Fortunately, soon after discovering Jennifer’s post, I contacted Connie Reece who blogs at Every Dot Connects. Connie helped me set up the first incarnation of this blog and gave me advice on how to get started blogging. She is a veteran blogger and a social media guru. I took several deep breaths, typed up something that I felt would be a good comment to Jennifer’s post and sent it to Connie for a sanity check. She gave me a few recommendations and I posted it.
Turns out that comment led to a few other comments and then an amicable online relationship with Jennifer when we both realized that we were supporters and donators to our local Mother’s Milk Banks. Jennifer and I now follow each other on twitter and read each other’s blogs. [As an aside, we offer all eligible milk bank donors a free subscription to Babble Soft applications to help them keep track of their pumped milk!]
Last week, Connie decided to create a case study on the incident and did a post called Case Study: Engagement Turns Critics into Allies. Where she outlines what happens:
Company
Babble Soft, provider of Web and mobile software for parents of newborns
Challenge
A press release for a new product launch was picked up by an influential blogger who wrote a very negative review.
Solution
Every Dot Connects worked with Babble Soft on a strategy to engage the blogger in constructive conversation.
Success
The blogger apologized for the tone of the review and continued to interact with Babble Soft founder via her blog, email and, later, on Twitter and other social networks.
Well soon after, Mack Collier who blogs at The Viral Garden and Marketing Profs did a post about it too called Worried About Bloggers Dissing Your Company? Read This and he starts with:
“Babblesoft founder Aruni Gunasegaram found herself in a position that any company would dread. She had launched a new product that she had hoped would be well-received by her target audience, mothers who breastfeed their children. Unfortunately, the product was immediately reviewed, and shredded, by Jennifer Laycock, a very popular mommy-blogger who blogs at The Lactivist. What happened next is a great lesson for companies wanting to handle crisis-management in the blogosphere.”
Then, Jennifer decided to write her own post about it. I was just beside myself with 3 blog mentions from 3 prominent bloggers within the span of a few days! Jennifer called her post Bloggers Need To Accept Responsibility Too and she says:
“Last year Aruni was launching her new parenting software. I happened to pick up the press release right as it went across the wires and had some pretty harsh words for the idea on my Lactivist blog.
‘Apparently, the company feels that there’s an untapped market in parents with extreme breastfeeding OCD issues, so they’ve made available some snazzy (I use the word loosely) new software that will allow these Ezzo-wannabes the absolute, total scheduling control that they long for.’
It got worse though. In fact, rereading that post I made more than a year ago I found myself chuckling and wincing at the same time. Chuckling because some lines in my post were really funny, but wincing as I realized just how biting and scathing my critique was. I’m generally a pretty easy going and nice person. I don’t tend to like to rely on snark, and yet there I was, throwing out snark like I was Perez Hilton.”
And continues:
“Ultimately, many of my readers ended up checking out the software and seeing the value in it for certain situations and while I still think the software’s a little on the anal side for the average mom, I fully recognize how helpful it could be for moms who DO need to track things.
Even more important to the story is the relationship that developed because of the way Aruni responded. Aruni became a regular reader of my blog and I became a reader of hers. We follow each other on Twitter and we’ve exchanged quite a few emails over the past year. Not long after the incident, I ended up sending her an email to share how refreshed I was at the way she handled things.
‘I want to compliment you on the way you handled your response to my blog post. I was pretty hard on you guys and you came in with class and style and really did a great job of turning the situation around to make yourself look good. I work in online reputation management and it’s rare to see a company respond so well. Just thought you should know that you gained my respect with that.’“
So needless to say, I am honored at their mentions and I have learned a lot in the past year. I hope I have at least become a better press release writer. 😉
Personally, I think the biggest lesson that I have learned over the year is that although Jennifer’s choice of words were hard to read, her sentiments are reflective of what most new moms and parents think. It’s not easy to introduce a new way of doing and looking at things to the truly oldest and arguably the most important profession in the world: parenthood!
I think our applications can help a new mom having trouble with breastfeeding reach the other side of the breastfeeding bridge. It can help her and her family understand patterns, positions, pumping schedules, etc. But at first blush, most people don’t think of what we do that way. The reasons why that’s the case would be a good topic for another case study! It always takes longer and costs more money to build a business than anyone ever thinks when they first start out. Hence, my recent Fork In The Road post.
I just read a quote I can definitely relate to by James Cherkoff left in the comment section of a blog post that Fred Wilson of A VC did about sharing information on your company:
“Or in the words of Howard Aiken: “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.””
I saw it as I was finishing up this post and it made me smile laugh out loud!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
breastfeeding,
case study,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
milk banking,
parenting,
twitter |
Tags: blog reactions,
connie reece,
jennifer laycock,
mack collier,
Mother's Milk Bank,
The Lactivist |
13 Comments »
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. 🙂
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
case study |
Comments Off on Elise’s Family
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. 🙂
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby manager,
case study |
6 Comments »
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)…
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby manager,
breastfeeding,
breastfeeding schedule,
case study,
nursing,
parenting,
pumping |
1 Comment »
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