Our first child was on the way. Like most expecting parents, we did the research—read the books, watched the videos, heard the advice. One thing kept coming up: track everything. Feeds, naps, nappy changes. Look for patterns.
The Search for an App
We tried the existing options. Every single one had problems:
- Too complex. Features we’d never use, screens we’d never visit. The cognitive load was absurd for sleep-deprived parents.
- Paid subscriptions. Monthly fees for logging when a baby ate? No thanks.
- Trust issues. Our baby’s data going who-knows-where. Privacy policies that made us uncomfortable.
- Decision paralysis. Too many apps, too many options, no clear winner.
We just wanted something simple. Log a feed. Log a nap. See the patterns. That’s it.
Building It Ourselves
So we built it. V0 came together before the birth—a scrappy prototype using Lovable with GitHub Copilot filling in the gaps. Just enough to work.
Then reality hit. The baby arrived, and suddenly we were actually using the thing at 3am with one hand while holding a newborn. V1 and V2 followed quickly—trimming friction, fixing the things that only become obvious when you’re exhausted.
A few months of incremental tweaks later, it became something we genuinely relied on.
What We Learned
Building under pressure strips away everything non-essential. When you’re the user and you’re sleep-deprived, you have zero tolerance for complexity. That constraint shaped the entire product philosophy.
Nappy Notes is now available for anyone who wants simple activity tracking without the bloat.