Can anyone recommend the best app for timing contractions?

[StarlessSea123]

Was just wondering if anyone can recommend a good one? Or is it best to just time them the old-fashioned way?

Generally I think that many people rely on apps to tell them how to live their lives and if the app doesn't work they don't know what to do.
In this case I think you should just concentrate on labour rather than "fiddling" with your phone. You don't need to time every single contraction! You should also go to hospital when you/your midwife think the time is right, not when an app tells you to.

@Bitofachinwag

Generally I think that many people rely on apps to tell them how to live their lives and if the app doesn't work they don't know what to do. In this case I think you should just concentrate on labour rather than "fiddling" with your phone. You don't need to time every single contraction! You should also go to hospital when you/your midwife think the time is right, not when an app tells you to.

But, you don’t know what these apps do as you’ve never used them?

Personally I would have found it much more effort to use a stopwatch or clock or phone to time every contraction and write them down rather than literally pressing a button on the app and hearing a soothing voice

It’s much “fiddlier” to do it the old fashioned way rather than using an app!

You don't need to write them down! You don't need to constantly time your contractions

I didn't bother timing any of mine. You'll know when it's time, believe me!!! 😆

@Bitofachinwag

Generally I think that many people rely on apps to tell them how to live their lives and if the app doesn't work they don't know what to do. In this case I think you should just concentrate on labour rather than "fiddling" with your phone. You don't need to time every single contraction! You should also go to hospital when you/your midwife think the time is right, not when an app tells you to.

YES THIS!!!!

Conception, testing, pregnancy, labour has been around since god was a boy, the move to how planned, prepared, measured and downright "scientific" things have become truly dismays me.

Obviously if a couple are struggling to conceive then that's a different matter and get all the help and tech available, by all means. Until your in that road though, for goodness sake let Mother Nature do her job and stop making testing companies etc Uber rich for absolutely no reason!!

@Mo1911 if the science that truly "dismays" you hasn't advanced then I would be dead, and so would my son. Seriously what is the harm in a simple timer app??

@Bitofachinwag you might not need one but when I was trying to work out if I was are in established labour (high risk labour) while looking after my toddler who kept asking me why were we having a baby it made things easier.

@Bitofachinwag

You don't need to write them down! You don't need to constantly time your contractions

This is a thread started by someone who wants an app to do this though. Why come on here and disregard what they want?

I didn't have a smartphone when my 13yo was born and I remember using a website to do it!

If you have incredibly long labours (I do) then it's helpful to get an idea whether things are progressing or just staying the same.

Timing using a clock is fine but means you have to remember the times from one contraction to the next and frankly I'd rather be concentrating on whatever I'm doing to get myself through the labour. Or means you end up with little scrappy bits of paper lying around and you have to actually think to transcribe the clock time into a time that you wrote down. With the app or website all you do is click a button when the contraction starts, when it finishes and you can look at it later to see whether a pattern is forming.

The app doesn't tell you to do anything. It's just a tool to help you ascertain time between contractions. Which is a question they ask when you go in whether or not you've been advised to wait for a specific number. I wouldn't like to go all the way to hospital to be told to go home, and midwives don't normally come out to the house to assess whether or not you're in labour.

Ooh mine didn't have a voice, don't think I could be doing with that :o

It's also quite obvious that you don't need to time every one, but it can be useful to time a few every so often to see how things are going.

bertiebotts another poster did say that the app told them when to go to hospital.
Yes of course the midwives will ask how long between contractions, but you don't need to have monitored every single contraction since they started to be able to tell them that.

This is a thread started by someone who wants an app to do this though. Why come on here and disregard what they want?

I was given the OP a different perspective.

Did anybody say that they used it to monitor every single contraction? You wouldn't do that with a clock so I'm not sure that an app would make you suddenly want to do that.

Most apps won't tell you when you go into hospital because different countries and sometimes hospitals have different ways of calculating it.

I hired a tens machine from
boots as part of my pain relief plan and that had a handy timer on it which worked well as you can hang it round your neck if you walk around.

I think phones and other things get a bit lost in the process but with the tens machine you're controlling the machine from the same device so really easy.

By the hospital comment I meant three in every ten. I found it great. I laboured at home with tens machine and app and baby was born within two hours of arriving at hosp.