A field guide to the first year.
For dads — from the week you find out, through the first year of life. It moves with you.
We went looking for something that would help. What we found were books. Good ones, stacks of them, all of it useful at 8pm on a Sunday with a highlighter.
None of it was any use at 3am.
Open Papa Prep Free. No account. Lives on your phone.
Help in the moment
It's 3am, they won't stop, and you have no idea why. Record ten seconds of it and Papa Prep tells you what to check first — hungry, overtired, gas, something physical — and what would mean call someone tonight.
All of it runs on your phone. The recording is never uploaded and never saved, and it works with no signal at all.
Know what's normal right now
It always knows where you are — week 14, or month 4 — and tells you what's actually true at that point. Crying peaks around two months and eases after. Baby blues should be lifting by day 14, and if they aren't, that's a different thing entirely.
The stuff you'd otherwise learn in hindsight, a little before you need it.
See what's coming
Hand it your calendar and it reads the week for you — what to ask at the well-child visit, what to have ready before her mom shows up, the photo you'll kick yourself for missing.
Including the questions your wife already typed into the invite. Those are the good ones.
Carry your half
One thing worth doing, picked from how she's actually doing — not from what week the calendar says it is. It keeps an honest record of what you took on.
And it screens you for the depression that peaks at three to six months. Nobody else is going to.
Sourced, not vibes. Every claim traces back to something — AAP guidance, a named study, a postpartum nurse's course. Where the evidence is thin or still argued over, the app says so right there on the screen. I'd rather it be honest than sound confident.
It stays on your phone. No account. No analytics. No trackers. Your notes, your logs, the recordings — all of it lives on the device, and you can export the whole thing whenever you want.
Free, and about ten seconds to start.
A due date is all it needs. Everything else is optional — blanks are fine.
Open Papa Prep