Going back to work: handing off the log.

On the first day back at work, most of your attention is still at home. When did she last feed? Did the nap happen? Did the bottle go down? The person at home has the answers, and a shared log is how you get them without calling every hour.

The log changes hands

For months the log has mostly been written by the parent at home. When that parent goes back to work, the daytime part moves to someone else: a partner, a grandparent, a nanny, or a daycare for part of the week. The hard part of that handover is not the app. It is agreeing what gets written down, by whom, and when.

Keep it to what the next person needs. Feeds with a time, and an amount if it was a bottle. Naps with a start and an end. Diapers, wet or dirty. And anything different: medicine with the time it was given, a feed refused, a temperature taken.

Hand over an ordinary day

Before the first day back, give the person taking over a picture of a normal day. Roughly when the naps fall and how long they last. How far apart the feeds are. How your baby likes to be settled.

If you have kept a log, you already have this. Two weeks of entries show the shape of a day better than a list written from memory the night before. Print the last fortnight and talk it through a few days before the first day back.

Then expect the first week to look different. A baby with a new person in charge, a new room or a new bottle often feeds and naps differently for a while. Read the first week back as a settling in week, not as the new normal.

When the feeds change

Going back to work often changes how your baby is fed during the day. Breast feeds become bottles of expressed milk or formula given by someone else, and the parent at work may be pumping during the day. Two habits make this easier.

Log the bottle, not just "fed". What was in it, and roughly how much was taken. That is what the parent at work needs to plan the evening feed, and, if they are pumping, the next session.

Keep one milk stock, and use the oldest first. Expressed milk in the fridge and freezer is easiest to manage when everyone follows the same rule and every bag or bottle carries the date it was expressed. How long expressed milk keeps differs between countries and between fridge and freezer, so go by the guidance your own midwife or health visitor gives you.

One record, not two

The usual problem is two partial records. The parent at work has the morning and the evening, the person at home has the middle, and nobody has the whole day. The evening then gets planned around a phone call and a guess: "I think he slept about an hour."

The fix is that everyone writes into the same log, as it happens. The parent at work can glance at it between meetings, and nobody has to remember times at the front door. If part of the day is at a daycare that keeps its own system, the daycare handover sheet covers how to copy the four lines that matter into your own log.

The same record helps at the next check up. The first weeks back at work often line up with a weighing appointment, and the note on weighing day explains which readings to read as a line and which ones to let go.

How Little Bean handles the handoff

In Little Bean the account owner invites a caregiver by email, and each caregiver gets their own login on the same baby. You choose a label for them, partner, nanny, daycare or grandparent, so the list reads the way your family does. The label is a name, not a permission: every invited caregiver can log and view everything for that baby, and a feed logged at home shows up on the phone of the parent at work.

A bottle is logged as breast milk or formula with an amount. A pumping session can go into a milk stock in the fridge or freezer, a bottle can be taken from that stock, and the stock shows how old the oldest milk is. Export a date range as a PDF or CSV and you have the briefing for the person taking over. Caregivers are covered by the account owner's plan: Standard covers both parents, Family covers up to five caregivers including both parents. The plans page has the detail.

Hand over the shape of the day, agree the few lines that matter, and keep one record. The first week will be uneven. The log just makes it easier to see it settle.

Going back to work is a change for your baby too. If your baby is feeding much less, keeps refusing the bottle, has fewer wet diapers than usual or seems unusually sleepy, or if you have questions about expressing and storing milk, contact your midwife, health visitor or doctor. A log helps you see the pattern; a professional is the person to read it with you. Nothing here is medical advice.