Tell it where you live and how you are covered. It tells you which tasks actually apply to your family, when each window closes, what documents to bring, and which office issues it.
iPhone · Works with no signal · No account needed
Coming to the App StoreMost of the list has no deadline at all. Knowing which is which is the entire job.
A job-based plan must allow at least 30 days after a birth. The Marketplace is generally 60. The app knows which one you are.
Hospitals usually request the number on the registration form. The request is easy to miss, and nothing tells you it failed.
Records are issued by state or county offices with their own forms and fees. You get sent to the right one, not to a generic form.
Every task carries its own list, so you find out about the certified copy before you are standing at the counter.
Each rule links to the government page it came from, with the date that page was last read. No date is asserted without one.
Confirmation and tracking numbers live on the task they belong to, so neither of you has to find the email again.
Notifications fire for hard deadlines and nothing else. An app that pings you about everything gets muted.
A second baby inherits your household answers instead of asking again, and the plan prints to one page you can hand to someone.
Everything renders from a copy on your phone. Sync catches up afterwards and never sits in front of the list.
Baby Docs tracks whether the number has been requested and whether the card has arrived. It has no field for the number itself, and the shareable one-page summary never prints one. The whole app works with no account: sharing is opt-in, uses Sign in with Apple, and the database enforces per-row who can read what. No advertising SDK, no behavioural analytics, no location code. Nothing is sold.
Privacy Policy →How it is built and why it works that way.
The problem with newborn paperwork is not that it is hard. It is that nobody tells you what applies to you, and the two items with real deadlines look exactly like the eighteen that do not.
Generic checklists make this worse. They list a passport next to a health plan enrollment window as though the two are comparable, and they cannot tell you which vital records office issues your child's birth certificate, because they do not know where you are.
Baby Docs asks six screens of questions, and every answer changes the list. Married or not. Job-based plan or Marketplace. Born in one state, living in another. Then it gives you the tasks that apply, ordered by when they close, each one with the documents you will be asked for and a link to the office that handles it.
It does not file anything. Filing a parentage form, an IRS election or an insurance enrollment on someone's behalf is a promise no app should make. It takes you to the official page and gets out of the way.
Every task, every deadline, every document checklist and every official link is free, for one child, on one device. Nothing with a date on it is ever behind a paywall: a deadline you cannot see is a deadline the app caused you to miss.
Plus adds any further children and the printable one-page summary. It is sold as a one-time purchase first, because the need is intense for about ninety days and then genuinely over, and selling you a subscription for that is selling you a cancellation. A monthly and a yearly option exist for people who prefer them.
| Platform | iPhone, iOS 17 and later |
| Language | Swift 6, strict concurrency |
| Framework | SwiftUI |
| Data | SwiftData on device, Postgres for shared families |
| Storage | Local first, encrypted at rest by iOS |
| Account | Optional, Sign in with Apple only |
Only two deadlines are hard. The 30-day job-based enrollment window and the 60-day Marketplace one are the only things the app will send a notification about. Everything else is a suggestion and is drawn as one. An app that treats a passport like an insurance window teaches you to ignore both.
Every rule cites its source. Each task carries the government URL its rule came from and the date someone last read that page, on the task itself rather than behind an info button. A rules app whose rules quietly go stale is worse than no app.
A verified state beats fifty guessed ones. Where we have read a state's own vital records page, the task links straight there and says so. Everywhere else it links to the federal directory, which has a state picker and is maintained by someone else. General and correct beats specific and wrong.
Changing an answer never destroys your work. Move from a job-based plan to the Marketplace and the plan rebuilds, but a task you have already completed, assigned or gathered documents for stays exactly as you left it.
Free for your first baby. No account needed to start.
Coming to the App Store