Pregnant? Use Your Smartphone
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Creatas/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Not sure what to expect when you’re expecting? Your smartphone can help.
Pregnancy apps are a blooming niche. A search on the Android app store Google Play and the iPhone App Store produced around 1,000 results.
ByteMobile, a research firm that anonymously sources data traffic statistics from the 3G and 4G networks, meaning they monitor actual usage activity of mobile users worldwide, released its first quarter 2013 Mobile Analytics Report in February. According to the report, on average, 47 percent of total mobile subscribers using one or more health app are using a pregnancy-related app.
There are apps for monitoring your baby bump, apps that provide check lists to help with “baby brain,” apps that provide a list of foods that are pregnancy no-no’s. There is even an app that will morph photos of you and your partner’s faces together to show what your baby might look like.
WebMD, the health and medical online database, this week released WebMD Pregnancy, a free app for iPhone that provides “hundreds of doctor-approved multimedia information and advice” for expectant mothers.
This app is all-encompassing. It includes 3-D visuals of a mother’s changing body as well as the baby’s development week-to-week (based on the due date), a check-list of common questions to ask the doctor (based on each pre-natal appointment), a symptoms tracker, a contraction timer, tips for healthy pregnancy and articles targeted to your current trimester.
Regardless of which app you choose, it is worth noting that most pregnancy apps are created just for fun and are not approved or sponsored by medical professionals. You should always raise any and all questions or concerns about your pregnancy with your doctor.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio