Itching to get your new mom life organized with a planner but not sure what to even track in it? This list of things to track in your planner as a new mom will help you remember all the important dates and appointments in your life, while also keeping the rest of your to-do list and goals organized.
There are definitely some learning curves when you become a mom, and learning how to manage your time and responsibilities within motherhood is one of them. This post will ease the transition and help you break down what things you should be tracking in your planner, from the first couple of months of feeding sessions and diaper changes to your moods and postpartum symptoms.
Say bye-bye to the sticky notes plastered everywhere and scattered mom brain because this list of things to put in your planner is going to simplify your life and help you stress wayyyy less!
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In This Post/Page
Overview of Things to Track In Your Planner As A New Mom
Before I dive into this list of things, appointments, habits, and goals to keep track of in your planner, I want to preface by saying that above all else, the most important thing you can do in this season of life as a new mom is to take care of your baby and you, which can’t always be perfectly planned for.
Time management and planning can be amazing tools in any season of motherhood, but it quickly becomes more of a disservice than a solution if too much pressure is put on it. So, keep your expectations and priorities in check before diving into time management and planning strategies, even the ones in this post.
Quick Planning Tips if You’re New to Planners and Time Management:
When managing your to-do list and figuring out what to track in your planner outside of set dates like appointments, I suggest breaking it all down to categories first, like I did in the list below. Then continue to break down the categories by what needs to be done on a monthly, weekly, and lastly, daily. From there you can track more granular things like habits.
When you do this, you can see the bigger picture first which helps you get a clearer idea of how you can best manage your time and which habits or goals are the most important.
It’s also really important to not go big all at once. Start with a couple of new things to track in your planner and add in more as you go. Remember: planning is meant to simplify your life, not complicate it!
| Related: How to Use a Planner (The Ultimate Planning Guide for Moms)
Now onto the good stuff! Here’s a categorized list of things that you can track in your planner as a new mom to keep your life organized and intentional.
Psst…get your planner printables, habit trackers, and more time management tools that match this list of things to track in your planner – all for free! It’s all in The Vault, which you get access to as an exclusive subscriber when you sign up for the newsletter below.
What to Track in Your Planner for Baby:
- Feedings (frequency, length, times, and reactions after feedings like baby being gassy or fussy)
- Diaper changes (wet and poopy)
- Symptoms and temperature readings if sick
- Medicine log
- Sleeping (*While I don’t suggest any mom, but especially new moms, obsess over their babies sleep and perfect nap or bedtime routines and schedules, it can be helpful to track themes like wake windows, REM cycles, etc.)
- Solids (type of food, any reactions, favorites, etc.)
- Weaning progress
- Milestones (sitting up unassisted, crawling, laughing more, etc.)
- Development goals and reminders (like doing tummy time every day, then encouraging crawling, etc.)
- Things to bring up with your baby’s doctor
What to Track in Your Planner for Yourself:
- Moods (Don’t obsess over this, but tracking your moods in a nightly reflection kind of way can help you identify themes and be on the lookout for signs of PPD, PPA, etc.)
- Postpartum healing progress
- Pumping sessions (times, amount of milk, etc.)
- Water intake
- Vitamins and supplements intake
- Sleep (quality of sleep, times you tend to get tired and experience the most fatigue, when you go to bed and wake up, etc.)
- Exercise and light movement (if you’re newly postpartum, get the green light from your doctor before implementing exercise and movement goals!)
- Menstrual cycle (even if you’re not experiencing one yet, keep track of any symptoms that may be related to getting your first postpartum period.)
- Personal goals (read more, pick up a hobby, journal, etc.)
- Breastfeeding (progress, milk supply, aversions, etc.)
- Health and nutrition goals (eat more frequent meals to prevent blood sugar drops, drink less coffee, etc.)
- Self-care
- Personal care (skincare, basics like showering and flossing teeth, etc)
- Dates with yourself (with or without baby, get some intentional time to focus on you)
- Things to address with your doctor
What to Track in Your Planner for Your Partner and/or Other Parent:
- Date nights
- Relationship goals and milestones
- Counseling dates
- Times they can bond with baby (bottle feedings, when you have alone time, bedtime routines, etc.)
What to Track in Your Planner For Your Family Finances:
- Subscriptions
- Bills
- Savings goals
- Financial meetings/check-ins
- Budgets
- Weekly and monthly spending
- Income
- Debt tracking
- Milestones (like paying off a debt or getting a raise)
- Sinking funds
- Wishlist items
- Tax payments and refunds
What to Track in Your Planner For the Whole Family:
- Family meetings
- Family fun days/nights
What to Track in Your Planner For Your Home:
- Home projects (decluttering, organizing, painting, etc.)
- Cleaning routines and schedules
- Meal planning and prepping
- Things to sell or donate
- Quarterly and annual house maintenance
- Shopping dates
- Gardening and homesteading goals, milestones, and important dates (last frost, when to till, etc.)
General Important Dates, Appointments, and Commitments to Track in Your Planner:
- Birthdays
- Anniversaries
- Regular doctor visits
- Optometrist appointments
- Dentist visits
- Holidays (if your planner is undated)
Best Planners for New Moms: My Top 3 Recommendations
This is by no means an in-depth guide to the best planners for moms, but if you’re just starting to use a planner and want something flexible for your new mom life, I recommend trying one or a combination of all of the following planner options below.
#1: Planner Printables
Printable planning pages, habit trackers, and baby care and stat tracking sheets, can all be the flexible time management solutions that you need in this season of life as a new mom. Just print them out and arrange them in a binder or folder in a way that works for you!
It’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to test out planning on paper, to figure out what you do and don’t like in a planner, and to truly customize it to your exact needs.
If you don’t have a printer, you can order prints of printables online from stores like Staples or go to your local library.
The best planner printables and time management tools are the ones you can get for free in The Vault: Resources for Creating and Living Your Best Mom Life.
Sign up here for The Vault here!
#2: The New Moms Workbook by Emily Ley
I don’t have this planner personally, but I honestly wish I had it in the first couple of months postpartum.
The planners by Emily Ley are simple and minimalist by design, while still being high-quality and functional. This planner for new and postpartum moms is no different!
This is the best planner for new, postpartum moms because:
- It has baby tracking pages for keeping track of the important information those first couple of months like feedings and diaper changes (and has a section for how you’re feeling each day)
- Has simple sections for planning mornings and nightly routines
- Has pregnancy checklists
- Features notes and memories pages
- Has a page for baby’s stats like weight and height
- Has a flexible cover
- Is 6.5 x 8.5″ making it the perfect size for your purse or diaper bag so you can easily keep track of important information for baby checkups
Check it out in more detail here.
#3: The Living Well Planner by Ruth Soukup
This planner is a parent’s best friend! The maker, Ruth Soukup of Living Well, Spending Less thought of the most important parts of a planner and created what I’d consider the best all-in-one planner. It’s also incredibly easy to plan with even if you’ve never used a planner before!
I’ve been an avid Living Well Planner user for a couple of years now, and haven’t considered any planner since I bought my first one (outside of the Business Anchor Planner by Restored 316, which is an online business owner’s best friend!)
Depending on your personal goals and priorities as a new mom, this one might be a bit too intense at first. It focuses on goals and projects (which you don’t have to utilize, of course), so if you want to stay away from overplanning, just keep that in mind.
However, if you want to have other focuses even as a new mom (recently postpartum or not), then this is my favorite planner for the job. It’s why I chose it even though I had a baby and was a new stay-at-home mom. I needed something else to focus on – something for me – and this planner helped me to think about my goals and passions outside of new motherhood.
So, with that in mind, here are the details of the planner.
The Living Well Planner is the best all-in-one planner because it:
- Is undated, which means you can start it whenever and even skip months if you fall out of the planning habit
- Has a more minimalist, yet beautiful style (no matter which of the four designs you choose)
- Has a yearly planning sheet to envision and plan for your big goals and most important priorities
- Has each month start with a goal crushing and project planning sheet to keep you focused on your goals even as a busy parent
- Has monthly budget sheets
- Has monthly thoughts and thanks pages
- Has beautiful quote pages at the end/beginning of each month
- Has a weekly calendar spread with a Monday start and daily schedules (even if you don’t follow a strict daily schedule, this is really beneficial for blocks of time or routines)
- Has a section for the top 3 “must do” items for each day
- Has another section for each day’s meal plans
- Comes with stickers for setting up your monthly spread (and because it’s blank, you can set it up to start on Mondays or Sundays – or any other day!)
- Has 230 full-color pages which are printed on 100# weight paper to limit bleedthrough (the pages are the highest quality planner pages I’ve personally come across and are great with any pens or pencils)
- Comes with free access to Ruth’s Crushing It™ Bootcamp series, which will help you get the most out of The Living Well Planner (this was life-changing for me, and I don’t mean that lightly)
- Is high-quality from cover to cover, and page to page
Get a 3D view of the planner and learn more here.
Bonus: Get the Best of Both Worlds With Digital Planners
If a paper planner doesn’t fit into your lifestyle but you want the creative and planning benefits of one, you can try a digital planner!
They’re exactly what you think: a paper planner format in digital form. They’re easy to edit as needed, where a paper planner definitely is not. Digital planners also tend to be cheaper than paper ones, are more eco-friendly, and more customizable.
If you’re not attached to putting pen to paper, but want the planner feel, a digital planner would make a great time management tool for you.
The best digital planners for new moms:
- Artful Agenda
- Laurel Studio
- Creating With Lucy
- K Digital Studio
Best Alternatives to Planners:
Project management tools like Trello or Asana can work great for time management and planning, too. For automatic syncing across multiple channels, using Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Sheets can be incredibly useful and for free.
These tools are flexible, can be set up to be streamlined and automatic, easily accessible by other family members, and so much more.
I personally use a combination of all of them and frequently test them out for different needs, like setting new habits and routines.
You can easily use them aside from your paper or digital planner, too!
| Related: The Best Planners for Any Mom (Paper and Digital)
All of This Sounds Great, But…Are Planners Really Worth It?
It depends. If you feel like you need a better way to manage your to-do list and remember your appointments (and everything in between) in one place, a planner can be well worth the investment.
And an investment is exactly what it is. When you have a good time management strategy in place, it reduces day-to-day decision fatigue, mental clutter, stress, anxiety, and more. It can also help the other members of your family when they know what to expect, too.
Aside from the logistical benefits of using a planner like the ones mentioned above, it can be a creative outlet and a great way to decompress. From color-coding to applying stickers, using a paper or digital planner can be worth it simply because it’s fun!
With that said, you get out what you put into it. So if you don’t set reminders to use it or don’t put much effort into making your planner work for you (paper or digital), it probably won’t feel like it’s worth the investment in terms of money or time.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Planner
One way to get the most out of your planner and set yourself up for success is to block out a chunk of time once a month to look over your calendar and write the chunk of your appointments, to-do lists, and any other important things that you need to keep track of.
Then make a date with yourself once a week to check in with your planner, reflect on the previous week, and plan for the next one.
Take it a step further and plan your day every morning, with or without additional time management tools like the Daily Do It notes from Living Well, Spending Less. You can also do a nightly reflection as a way to see how the day went and how you can switch things up if needed.
If you have a hard time remembering to do these things, set up a reminder on your phone. Eventually, you won’t need it and it will be a habit.
The Gist
To sum it all up, there are a ton of things to track in your planner as a new mom. From habits and goals to breastfeeding and pumping sessions, you can track all the things and then some!
Just make sure that what you plan for and track in your planner is intentional and something that truly is a priority for you and your family, and not because it’s a trend or because you’re comparing your life to someone else’s.
So, if you’re new to planning, make sure to set aside time once a month and one day each week to use your planner and assess how planning is working for you and your family.
Then add things in as you see fit, from the following categories or others:
- Baby (like number of diaper changes in the early days)
- Yourself (your goals and self-care)
- Your partner and/or the other parent (date nights and times they can care for baby)
- Family finances (budgets and spending habits)
- The whole family (family fun nights and family meetings)
- Your home (big projects and every day cleaning schedules)
- General important dates and holidays (doctor visits and anniversaries)
Keep tracking and finding what works for you!
Resources Mentioned In This Post
- Free planner printables, baby care tracking sheets, postpartum care checklists and tracking sheets for mom, habit trackers, and more -> The Vault
- The New Moms Workbook by Emily Ley
- The Living Well Planner by Ruth Soukup
- Digital planners: Artful Agenda, Laurel Studio, Creating with Lucy, and K Digital Studio
- Planner alternatives:
- Project management tools:
- Trello
- Asana
- Clickup
- Google Calendar
- Google Keep
- Google Sheets
Want more time management tips for moms? Check out all the posts and resources!
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