How to remember your baby's daily vitamin D drops (and not give them twice)

Health bodies give general advice here, and it differs by country and by how the baby is fed. In the UK, the NHS advises a daily vitamin D supplement for breastfed babies from birth to one year. In the US, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also recommends vitamin D for breastfed infants, and both say that formula-fed babies may need none or less depending on how much fortified formula they drink.

The exact thresholds and amounts are not the same everywhere, and some products contain other ingredients. So ask your pediatrician or health visitor what applies to your baby, and follow the dose on the label or the one they give you. Baton does not suggest or calculate doses.

There are two usual mistakes. One is forgetting: the days run together in the first months, and a missed day leaves no trace. The other is a double dose: one parent gives the drops in the morning, the other gives them again at night because nobody wrote it down.

Both come from the same gap, which is that the dose leaves no record anyone else can check in two seconds.

• Tie it to something that already happens every day: the first feed after you wake, the morning diaper change, or brushing your own teeth.
• Keep the bottle where you do that thing, in sight, and not in a cupboard. Keep it out of the baby's reach, as the label says.
• Decide who does it. “Mornings are Anna's” beats “whoever remembers”.
• Write it down at the moment you give it, not later. A tick on a calendar on the fridge works, or a phone note, or an app.
• If you miss a day, do not double up the next day on your own. Check the label, or ask your pharmacist or pediatrician what they want you to do.

Baton has an optional daily tick for exactly this. It is off until you turn it on, and it is free. It is a record of what you did and does not tell you what to give.

1. 1Open More, then Settings, and in the Health section turn on “Daily tick on Today”.
2. 2The medicine name is “Vitamin D” unless you type your own. In Dose, type the text you want shown, exactly as it is on your label or as your doctor told you. Baton shows it as typed.
3. 3On Today you now see a card with the name, “Not ticked yet today” and a Tick button. Tap Tick when you give the drops. The card changes to “Given at” and the time, with the name of the parent who tapped it, and the button goes away for that day.

A shortcut: if you log a medicine from the Health button and the daily tick is still off, the form offers “Show a daily tick for this on Today” so the same name and dose become the tick.

The tick is an entry in the log like any other, so it shows in History, can be edited if you tapped at the wrong time, and appears in the CSV export and in the PDF report's medicines list. A new day starts a new tick at midnight local time.

The tick is saved to the baby's log, which both parents share through their own iCloud accounts, so a tick tapped on one phone reaches the other when both phones are online. The partner sees “Given at” with the name of whoever tapped it.

One thing to know: the switch that shows the tick card is a setting on each phone. Your partner turns on “Daily tick on Today” on their phone too, with the same name. Until then their Today screen will not show the card.

On a phone that has joined the household as view only, the Tick button is not shown.

Baton Plus has a medicine reminder: in More, then Reminders, you name the medicine and choose a number of hours from 1 to 24. Baton then sends a notification that many hours after the last dose you logged, ticks included. The interval is whatever your doctor or pharmacist gave you, and Baton only counts from the last dose you logged.

Two limits worth knowing. It counts from the last logged dose, so it is a reminder “24 hours after yesterday's tick” and not “every day at 8:00”, and it does nothing until a dose has been logged in the last week. If you want a fixed time of day, the clock app's own alarm does that and works with or without Baton. The tick itself and the shared record are free.

Ask if you are unsure whether your baby needs a supplement, which product to use, how much to give after a missed day, or if you have given a double dose by mistake. Bring the log: it shows exactly which days were given. Bring the bottle too, since products differ.