Customer Reviews

Itzbeen Baby Care Timer

5 star:		(344)
4 star:		(80)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(46)

 

 

When I suggested to my wife that we needed this item on our baby registry, she thought I was just feeding my gadget habit, baby-style. Having been a night nurse for newborn twins and triplets for years, she thought she would never need this item. Well, this item arrived on the second day after we got home from the hospital - and my wife wishes that she had it on the first.

You see, one of the skills that really suffers with sleep deprivation is math. If you can even mentally keep track of the times or write them down, doing the "hours" math on when our baby last fed, when she had her diaper changed, etc. is really not as easy as it sounds when you've had no more than about 45 minutes of continuous sleep for four days. So this does it for you - four timers with little icons and a left/right slider for breastfeeding (which is also a tough thing to remember, but something you really don't want to forget). It is exceedingly simple - press the icon button and it restarts the timer - perfect for the sleep-deprived mind.

As for the suggestions by some reviewers that this timer needs additional features, such as feeding totals and quantity subtotals, I disagree. I think that additional features would likely take away from the simplicity of the device - making it more complicated to operate on limited brainpower and thus less likely to be used. Those with more complex needs might consider a PDA with a spreadsheet or specially designed program.

It's not often I get to hear that I was right and my wife was wrong (we're usually on the same page). This was one of those times.

This timer system is beyond helpful - it becomes your BRAIN when you have a newborn, as the hours, feedings and diaper changes become a total blur during this amazing yet totally sleep deprived time of your life. While it would be nice to have a few more features like total ounces drank, whether the diaper was a wet one or a doodie, and tracking of daily totals for everything - that'd be more of a infantcare PDA, and is a bit beyond the scope of this little device. All it aims to be is a timer that will keep track of the key stats in your baby's life, consequently making your life way easier. I wake up in middle of the night and the baby is grunting, for example. I click the backlight button and see that in fact the baby has only been asleep for an hour, and had a diaper and bottle right before that. Then I just go back to sleep. On the other hand, he beguns grunting and making noises and I see the Itzbeen says it's been 2 hours 30 minutes since his last bottle or diaper, and I know it's time to get up and feed him.

It's also great for team caregiving, as my husband can hand me the Itzbeen after doing his morning shift, and I automatically know when the last change and bottle were. We use the wildcard button to track bottle expirations too.

Thumbs up for the developers of this cool gadget - I hope to see an "Itzbeen II" w/ some advanced features in time for my next baby - although keeping it simple does help keep it easy and quick to use, especially in the fog of a 1am, 3am, and 5am feeding schedule! (my son never got the memo that full term babies are only supposed to eat every 3 or 4 hours :)

Having twins we always had to write down everything, or we wouldn't remember whom we feed, when we feed them, or any details. We used to keep a chart, but then I received the Itzbeen as a gift. It is so much faster to press a button then to write everything down. When we go out I just toss it in my purse and when the babies start crying I can just pull out the itzbeen look at the timers and figure out if it is time to eat or they are just being fussy. If the boys do eat or require a diaper change, I can record it easily. no more carrying around a clipboard!

I didn't give it 5 stars because it would be even better if it could track how many oz of formula the babies eat and if it could total the number of hours the baby slept.

But still it is a nice tool for forgetful people. I'm buying a 2nd one, so I have one for each of my twins.

I got this product before our baby was born as a way to help my husband be involved with the care of our newborn--I figured that keeping track of things like diapering and feeding schedules would help him feel more integral to the life of the new baby since I would be breastfeeding and doing the lion's share of the feeding work. But it turned out to be more than just a good idea to have when my labor and delivery took 3 days in the hospital and produced one beautiful but tired infant. Our daughter took a couple of weeks to come out of her daze (3 days of being squeezed by contractions would stun anyone!), and in the meantime we had to wake her for feedings, which we juggled with a pumping schedule to help my milk supply come in and build up. This turned out to be an invaluable gadget during those first chaotic weeks. As a bonus, since it arrived two weeks before we delivered, we also used it to time my contractions at home.

Pros:
-The four seperate timers are great. We managed to track our daughter's feedings, my breast pumping, her sleep cycles, and other miscellaneous events all at once. The option of being able to set an alarm (silent with flashing light or beeping with flashing light) for each of the timers was an extra bonus.
-The nightlight feature is fantastic. Even now when we're not using the timers that often I use the nightlight several times a night to check on our daughter without turning the lights on or disturbing my sleeping husband. When we were using the timers the seperate backlight feature was also critical since we could check the display without making it too bright.
-It's small and fits in the palm of your hand or clips onto your clothing. So it goes everywhere and I even slip it into the diaper bag when we're going out of town or even just headed out and about and I need to keep track of something.
-It did accomplish what I wanted it to: my husband was able to be very involved with our daughter's life in the first few weeks. Plus it helped me out that he could keep track of things that needed to be done when I was completely zoned out and sleep deprived.

Cons:
-There really aren't any. Some people complain that it should have more features, like keeping track of wet/dirty diapers or other feeding details. But that's really only something that you do for a short time, and adding features like that would detract from the simplicity of the device.

This is a great product. It had it's heaviest use in the first few weeks of my daughter's life, but we continue to use it and find ways to make it useful for all of us.

What I like least about the device is that it only knows when something happened the LAST time. It does not help you answer the pediatrician questions how often the diapers are full, or how often baby eats, or how long baby sleeps in total. If you have an iphone or ipod touch, buy the applet sleepyhead from tv-apathy. It tracks everything, is easy to use, gives nice overviews, provides useful history, and is not another piece of techtoy that will only be useful for a short time ...

My timer was defective in that LED screen for the top function (the diaper change button) was not complete...meaning you could not discern the digits (was it an 8 or 0?). Otherwise, the other functions worked and I was able to see how much time elapsed. Overall, though I stopped using the timer fairly quickly for a few reasons.

1. I had a newborn and when she was yelling/screaming crying for her bottle or permanently attached to my breast...I just forgot to press that button to start the timer over.

2. For some reason, I envisioned a product that would not only keep time between feedings, diaper changes, etc. but would also keep track of the sleep time during the day, etc. or the number of diaper changes & feedings per day. BUT it only tells how much time has elapsed from the your last feeding, changing etc. Maybe I am asking too much, but I don't see what differentiates this product from a multi-use timer. It's essentially several times on one device. Overall, it is a good but for all the raving reviews I just expected more.

I came back and edited this review because I wanted to add that they company has fabulous customer service. I emailed the company to inquire about getting a replacement for the timer. The president of the company emailed me back promptly on a Sunday asking for my address. He did not ask me to send back the defective timer and must have shipped the replacement priority or overnight because I received the replacment in no time.

Really cool product. Couldn't wait to receive it. Love it. It took some figuring out how/when to best use the timers. It seems you can either use it to count down for example when baby last had a diaper change, etc., but if you set a timer for that same event, it erases your previous time when the timer goes off. Biggest thing: DON'T DROP IT!!! I mistakenly had it clipped to my belt thinking that the belt clip would hold it. I bent down to pick something up, it popped off, hit the floor, and landed it some way so that it broke the back-light button. Took it apart thinking it would pop back out only to find that nothing would work whatsoever when we screwed it back together. I liked the product enough though to order another one. I intend to give these as gifts for baby showers with the caveat to not drop them.

How did mothers raise babies without an Itzbeen timer? I am totally glued to mine 24-7. When the baby's crying and I can't figure out why, the first thing I look at is the timer. How long has it been since she ate? How long has she been sleeping for? When did I change her diaper last? A perfect baby shower gift imo.

When I got this item as a shower gift last year, I couldn't wait to use it. Once my son was born, you had to pry this thing out of my cold dead hands. It went everywhere with us and if we happened to forget it, we were lost.

Perhaps, like some people, they think it's silly. It's a gadget this is true, but when you're a new parent and you are flying by the seat of your pants, in a haze of sleep deprivation, this is a great tool to help you remember the basics. We slept with it, we dragged it around the house with us like a security blanket. We flew cross country when my son was five weeks, and this thing was an absolute godsend. Do math? With a newborn? Haha!

True, it's a short lived need. Once your baby gets on a schedule, you won't really need to rely on it so much. By about 2.5 months, we were able to put it away. But in the time we did use it, we USED it. I see people selling these used on ebay, saying that they got it and ended up forgetting about it, which is sad.

I will echo the other people here in that I would have liked a feature that allowed you to record the amount they last ate.

Bottom line, it's great for new parents, and even a seasoned second time parent. I'm sure wrangling a toddler and a newborn, can't be easy.

I thought this would be incredibly helpful once our baby was born, but ended up using the Total Baby app on my iphone instead. The app is much more user friendly with an intuitive interface. In contrast, I had to read the manual for the itzbeen twice and still couldn't make sense of it. I thought the nightlight would come in handy, but it is a glaring LED light that was disruptive both to our baby and my sleeping husband. There is a blue background light that's much more innocuous, but it only stays on for a few seconds at a time. Overall, I found this to be a non-essential item. Now I just use it as a clock next to the glider where I breastfeed. HIGHLY recommend the Total Baby app if you have an iphone, ipad or itouch!