Milk Diary: Baby Feeding

Supports parents in their feeding journey through tracking sessions, managing milk storage, staying organized with schedules and gaining insights from their journey data.

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Inspiration

Milk Diary was inspired by my experience of becoming a mom and the overwhelming complexity of baby feeding. When my daughter was born and spent her first week in the NICU, my careful plan to exclusively nurse suddenly became pumping around the clock. Even after bringing her home, our feeding journey kept evolving from nursing, pumping & bottle feeding to eventually exclusive pumping.

I spent countless hours in forums and Facebook groups, desperately trying to figure out pumping schedules, how to manage my supply and milk storage. I cycled through multiple tracking apps, but as our needs changed, I'd have to switch apps or give up tracking altogether. Nothing quite fit our evolving journey or helped me and my husband figure out how to coordinate our daughter’s needs together.

My journey taught me that feeding a baby goes beyond nutrition, it's about managing a complex logistical operation while often sleep-deprived and emotionally exhausted. Milk Diary was born from my experience and the experiences of countless parents who shared similar struggles. My mission is to lighten the mental load for parents in their baby feeding journey.

What it does

Milk Diary is a baby feeding companion app that supports all feeding methods: nursing, pumping, bottle feeding, or any combination. The key features are:

  • Intelligent session tracking: Log any type of feeding session using natural language through the Milk Diary assistant.
  • Automated scheduling: Generate personalized feeding schedules based on your needs. Set custom alarms reminders with your schedule so you never forget a feed or session.
  • Multi-caregiver support: Share feeding data, milk storage and schedules across multiple caregivers without requiring accounts. Perfect for coordinating between parents, grandparents, and childcare providers.
  • Storage management: Monitor your freezer and fridge stash with automatic expiration tracking. Know exactly how much milk you have, where it's stored, and when it expires. The app can deduct from storage when logging bottle feeds or add to storage when logging pump sessions.
  • Visual insights & analytics: Beautiful charts reveal feeding patterns and supply trends. Track your journey with daily, weekly, and monthly views. Generate PDF reports for pediatrician, lactation consultant or primary care appointments.

How we built it

  • Swift & SwiftUI
  • SQLiteData + CloudKit
  • Apple On-Device Foundation Models
  • AlarmKit
  • RevenueCat

Challenges we ran into

Building for iOS 26 meant navigating a moving target as the APIs changed from beta to beta. The Apple Foundation Models was the major reason I decided to make iOS 26 the minimum version of the app, but trying to figure out the best way to design the data model, instruction and prompts with little documentation and existing use cases to achieve the best output was difficult. The biggest non-technical challenge was balancing feature depth with simplicity. Every feature had to pass the “2 AM test” meaning could a sleep-deprived parent use this while holding a baby? The 2 AM test helped me ensure the app is easy to use and navigate.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Real parent feedback: Built the app in collaboration with parents from various feeding journeys and incorporated their feedback from day one.
  • Inclusive design: The app supports all feeding methods equally, recognizing that every baby feeding journey is valid.
  • Privacy focus: No accounts required to use the app and data automatically syncs via iCloud. Milk Diary respects parents’ privacy during this intimate journey by ensuring their data is protected.
  • Accessibility: The app supports VoiceOver and Dynamic Type from the start because accessibility should never be an afterthought.
  • Support for families with multiples: While other apps force parents of twins or triplets to constantly switch between separate child profiles, Milk Diary uses a single family profile where each child's data remains distinct but centrally accessible. Tracking is as seamless for multiples as it is for families with one baby.

What we learned

Choosing iOS 26 as the minimum version was a big tradeoff. I wasn’t able to launch quickly because I was waiting for the iOS 26 launch. Even after the OS became available it still takes time for people to update which has limited our initial reach. The upside of iOS 26 is the powerful capabilities of Apple Foundation Models. Incorporating Apple Intelligence proved essential for delivering an experience that makes tracking and scheduling easier for parents.

What's next for Milk Diary: Baby Feeding

Here are some features on our roadmap for the coming months:

  • Predictive analytics: Help parents understand how long their milk storage will last based on their baby's consumption patterns.
  • Symptom tracking: Monitor reactions to formula changes, nursing or pumping pain to identify patterns and help parents more easily share this with their providers for faster feedback loops.
  • Guided sessions: Interactive nursing & pumping sessions that focus on helping mom listen to her body instead of relying on timers.
  • Weaning support: Gentle weaning mode with gradual session reduction schedules so moms feel more supported in ending their journey.
  • Localization for multiple languages: Translate the strings in the app to make it available to parents in regions where English is not the primary language.

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