CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Ben McNeill doesn’t claim to be a Super Dad.   But he did come up with a super way to keep track of his baby’s ever-changing schedule that has become a successful small business. 

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It’s called Trixie Tracker. Named for his daughter, it is an on-line software application that allows parents to track all those diapers and bottles, as well as nursing and pumping times, medicine dosing and even introduction of solid foods.  

 

“I think Trixie was probably about a month old and I was keeping track of diapers and bottles on little scraps of paper, trying to keep some sanity about the whole system,” McNeil said. “And I thought this would be great to share with Jennifer at work, to let her take a peek into the window of what’s going on at home.”

 

McNeill, who is a designer, launched the program on his blog and got a big response from readers.

“They liked seeing actual hard data about what newborn babies are doing and the traffic started taking off,” said McNeill.

 

Jeremy and Catrina Reading of Raleigh started using the tracker when their younger son was just 6 weeks old.    As working parents, they encouraged their nanny to use the system as well.   Even though their boys are now two and four, Catrina enjoys being able to check on them from her job as a pathologist at Rex Hospital.

 

“If it’s around three o’clock, my older son may or may not be sleeping,” she said. “So I may wait until he’s fallen asleep to go home so I don’t disturb our nanny while she’s trying to put him down to sleep.”

 

Reading acknowledges that the family’s busy schedule doesn’t allow for much time to write in the baby books, so Trixie Tracker has become their family’s record of the boys’ babyhood. McNeill says he hears that a lot and it’s a big responsibility.

 

“When I realized that people are treating Trixie Tracker as their own personal baby book, that’s a very precious artifact that they’re creating,” he said. 

 

Future plans include a way for parents to print information to a book or poster.   A six-month subscription costs $24.95.