Ask Flo: Apps for Tracking Labor Contractions

I’ve received plenty of pregnancy, post-pregnancy, and birth-related questions in my inbox lately. Having just gone through the experience myself, I’ve emerged with a better understanding of the ways that technology and mobile apps can help pregnant persons on the journey into parenthood. I’ll start by tackling a question about contraction apps.

I did not use a contraction app because the minute I felt like I was going into labor, I went to the hospital and relied on the machine they hooked up to me for the countdown. But I’ve done a bit of research, and I knew from an article I did a while back for Reviewed that both The Bump and Sprout have built-in contraction timers, along with offering a whole host of pregnancy tracking.

If you’re looking for something specifically for tracking labor contractions, I found an app for iOS and Android called, simply, Contractions Timer that’s relatively well-rated. The app has well over 100,000 downloads in both app stores. It also offers a graph readout, which is how the hospital machine would track your contractions in real-time. The only downside with these particular apps, however, is that you’re required to follow when contractions hit manually. And I can tell you from experience that attempting to do anything in real-time while you’re dealing with intense discomfort and pangs of debilitating pain is almost impossible.

Screenshots of the Android version of the Contractions app.

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