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Smartphones have made many spheres of everyday life much easier: ordering food, looking for interesting places or shopping has never been so easy in history. No wonder that more and more applications are created that serve different groups of people. Among them, we can find pregnancy applications, i.e. programs that provide support and current information to pregnant women.
How do pregnancy apps work?
Pregnancy is undoubtedly a special and unique, but also difficult period in the life of every woman who has decided to have a baby. Even the most ordered and composed ladies often feel insecure in the role of a future mother, which makes it harder and harder to remember about visits to the doctor or all the necessary preparations before the baby is born. It is related both to the hormonal imbalance accompanying pregnancy and the emotional burden of the exceptional situation itself.
Pregnancy apps are designed to help you cope with this period. They provide current information about the state of pregnancy: they can count down the days to the expected date of birth, provide indicative information about the stages of a child’s development or remind you about visits to the doctor and other matters. In this way, they help the mother-to-be to organize her daily life, but this is not the only function of the pregnancy apps: it is equally important that they provide psychological support to the pregnant woman. Not only do they have a friendly interface and often display nice messages, but by providing real-time information consistent with professional medical knowledge, they reduce the feeling of confusion caused by various things that happen to the pregnant woman’s body.
Of course, there is no doubt that the pregnancy application will not replace your partner’s support and professional medical care. Nevertheless, various information that helps to organize the pregnancy experience, and the information provided through an object that most of us always carry with us, can significantly increase the psychological comfort of a pregnant woman.
What features should you pay attention to when choosing a pregnancy app?
Smartphone software manufacturers are well aware that there is a demand for pregnancy apps on the market and that is why we can find many such products. What to consider when choosing the best pregnancy application?
- A countdown due to the due date, usually based on the date of the last period entered. The pregnancy calendar certainly helps to keep the count and answer the repeated questions about what month of pregnancy we are in. This is the primary function of most pregnancy apps.
- Another basic functionality of each pregnancy application is the organizer: we can enter the dates of doctor’s appointments and other important matters in it, in order to receive a reminder early.
- Information about the development of the child. The way they are presented differs depending on the application: some show videos and visualizations of the developing fetus, and the Hi Mommy application sends messages on behalf of the child, e.g. that he is already tight in his mother’s belly.
- Database with various advice on pregnancy and motherhood. Some apps come with short articles or even tutorial videos. They contain suggestions on diet, exercises for pregnant women and many other tips. The eDziecko application even advises its users to visit a beautician to improve their mood!
- A weight calculator that helps you stay fit during pregnancy. It is a convenient function because it is usually linked to the pregnancy calendar, so it takes into account its progress when calculating whether the weight is correct.
- Chat with a specialist – Some pregnancy apps allow you to connect in real time with an obstetrician who will be able to advise you if you have any concerns about your pregnancy. Usually this is a feature available in the paid version of the program, but often the free version entitles you to, for example, one advice per month.
- Functions that start at the end of pregnancy, reminding you, for example, of a layette for mom and baby to go to the hospital. What’s more, the Preglife app includes the function of counting contractions, which allows you to prepare for the moment of birth very closely.
- Of course, the application interface also plays a big role. If the pregnancy application is to be used throughout pregnancy, its interface should be user-friendly, intuitive and in a language perfectly understood by the user.