[OC] I tracked sleep, diaper, and milk consumption data for my first child daily for 2 years.
September 9, 2024
[OC] I tracked sleep, diaper, and milk consumption data for my first child daily for 2 years.
Posted by Miccles
16 comments
I used Excel to enter daily data and aggregate to weekly, in some cases. I used Python/matplotlib to visualize the data.
BM is breastmilk and WM is whole milk.
Some interesting tidbits:
I don’t have the full 2 years’ worth of data for milk consumption because when we hit a certain age, we moved to solid foods only.
When it comes to formula pricing, we spent just under $2,000 on formula and saved about $500 by offsetting that volume with breastmilk.
My wife struggled with breastmilk production at one point which led to the large decline you can see. (Luckily that is not the case with our second child right now!)
We spent about $1,300 on diapers within this timeframe (ages 0-2).
My daughter experienced some major GI issues early in life. During the second week of her life (the week with 100 total diapers), we changed 21 diapers in a single day! After a rough first couple of months, things started to stabilize a bit.
What’s your projected lifetime diaper count?
I love the sleep graph. It’s beautiful to see the transition from two naps to one.
20+ dirty diapers in a week even after 1 year old? Is that normal? 3 per day? That seems insane.
I wish I had tracked it, but when my kid was about 4, bedtimes were super difficult, lots of wild behavior and difficulty winding down. We abruptly moved bedtime forward by a whole hour, and within maybe a week everything smoothed out. Little dude was just getting overtired, and when given the opportunity to go to bed, certainly took a few extra stories and chat time at first, but it made everything so much easier.
Now he’s 7 and when he gets tired at the end of the day will just say “i’m tired lets go to bed” and let us know.
the sleep graph is beautiful. A someone who does work in nonlinear behavior and chaos, if you look right to left you see a bifurcation and then pure chaos. parenthood!
My first reaction was, “Holy crap, your baby sleeps until 9am almost every day? That’s incredible!” But then I saw that he/she is going to bed after 10pm most evenings. If that works for you, then great. But eventually when they start school, you’re going to want them on an earlier bedtime/wake schedule. Just putting it out there now!
This is so cool! I feel like (assuming there isn’t already) there should be a book out there that’s got a bunch of graphs related to parenting. It’d be a cool coffee table book and this is such a cool way to show how sleep habits change and solidify in the early years
the first third of the sleep graph is the second biggest reason i don’t want kids. the first is money
What precipitated the change from two naps to one?
Really helping younger folks consider children now xD
I have a kid coming in December. This data is helpful.
As someone preparing to be a dad, thank you so much. This is so helpful for what to expect.
initially i was like wtf is that sleep graph, but the more i look at it the more i absolutely love it. its so beautiful i might print it. the confusion of the data towards organized and then the transition from two naps to one is just beautiful to me.
can you tell me how you recorded this?
That is so cool to see the circadian rhythm resolve over time!
The sleep chart is beautiful. and also a reminder: Sleep when the baby sleeps. It’s important, you need sleep and if you try to wait, you won’t have time. Sleep when the baby sleeps.
16 comments
I used Excel to enter daily data and aggregate to weekly, in some cases. I used Python/matplotlib to visualize the data.
BM is breastmilk and WM is whole milk.
Some interesting tidbits:
I don’t have the full 2 years’ worth of data for milk consumption because when we hit a certain age, we moved to solid foods only.
When it comes to formula pricing, we spent just under $2,000 on formula and saved about $500 by offsetting that volume with breastmilk.
My wife struggled with breastmilk production at one point which led to the large decline you can see. (Luckily that is not the case with our second child right now!)
We spent about $1,300 on diapers within this timeframe (ages 0-2).
My daughter experienced some major GI issues early in life. During the second week of her life (the week with 100 total diapers), we changed 21 diapers in a single day! After a rough first couple of months, things started to stabilize a bit.
What’s your projected lifetime diaper count?
I love the sleep graph. It’s beautiful to see the transition from two naps to one.
20+ dirty diapers in a week even after 1 year old? Is that normal? 3 per day? That seems insane.
I wish I had tracked it, but when my kid was about 4, bedtimes were super difficult, lots of wild behavior and difficulty winding down. We abruptly moved bedtime forward by a whole hour, and within maybe a week everything smoothed out. Little dude was just getting overtired, and when given the opportunity to go to bed, certainly took a few extra stories and chat time at first, but it made everything so much easier.
Now he’s 7 and when he gets tired at the end of the day will just say “i’m tired lets go to bed” and let us know.
the sleep graph is beautiful. A someone who does work in nonlinear behavior and chaos, if you look right to left you see a bifurcation and then pure chaos. parenthood!
My first reaction was, “Holy crap, your baby sleeps until 9am almost every day? That’s incredible!” But then I saw that he/she is going to bed after 10pm most evenings. If that works for you, then great. But eventually when they start school, you’re going to want them on an earlier bedtime/wake schedule. Just putting it out there now!
This is so cool! I feel like (assuming there isn’t already) there should be a book out there that’s got a bunch of graphs related to parenting. It’d be a cool coffee table book and this is such a cool way to show how sleep habits change and solidify in the early years
the first third of the sleep graph is the second biggest reason i don’t want kids. the first is money
What precipitated the change from two naps to one?
Really helping younger folks consider children now xD
I have a kid coming in December. This data is helpful.
As someone preparing to be a dad, thank you so much. This is so helpful for what to expect.
initially i was like wtf is that sleep graph, but the more i look at it the more i absolutely love it. its so beautiful i might print it. the confusion of the data towards organized and then the transition from two naps to one is just beautiful to me.
can you tell me how you recorded this?
That is so cool to see the circadian rhythm resolve over time!
The sleep chart is beautiful. and also a reminder: Sleep when the baby sleeps. It’s important, you need sleep and if you try to wait, you won’t have time. Sleep when the baby sleeps.