Charting Newborn Territory

You might have seen some kind of parenthood-in-numbers stats such as “a baby goes through 6,000 diapers before potty training on average”. Well, I am currently getting to live that in real life: in the very first month of my daughter’s life, she has already had 233 meals/diaper changes.

As much I was mesmerized by her milk-drunk smiles and chubby hands and feet, I was wondering how can I represent this experience to show the commitment and energy that it takes for a new mother (and her support team) to tend to her baby. As they say, “the days go by slow and the years go by fast”.

“The night shift station” — complete with a bottle warmer, pre-measured formula and warm water at the right temperature in a thermos. So I can whip up a perfect meal in 10 seconds before my brain even wakes up.

My baby’s nanny and I made detailed records of her each intake and output to make sure that she is gaining weight properly and digesting well. I input this stack of sheets into Excel/Tableau and ta-da! The feeding schedule of a newborn was visualized:

Each ring of dots represents a day in her first month, from day 1 in the inner circle outwards to day 31. The size of bubbles represents the amount of milk drank during each feeding (usually somewhere between 30–90ml in one sitting depending on her mood).