# Your first day

> The app is open and it is empty. Here is the whole of what to do on day one, which is less than you think.

Last updated 18 August 2026

Save your address somewhere, log one feed, and put baybay on your home screen. That is the whole of day one — about two minutes, and you can do it while feeding.

## The three things, in order

![The baybay log screen: how long since the last feed and the last sleep, a large button for each, the totals for today, then the recent entries.](https://baybay.baby/assets/img/docs/log-screen.png?v=6a84bb3b)
*The whole app, more or less. Two buttons and how long it has been.*

1. **Save your address.** Your household has its own web address, and it is how you get back in. Bookmark it, or leave the tab open for now. [More about your address](https://baybay.baby/docs/your-address.md).
2. **Log one feed.** Open the app and tap **Log feed**. Pick bottle or breast, and save. The time fills in as now, so there is nothing to type. [More about logging a feed](https://baybay.baby/docs/logging-a-feed.md).
3. **Add it to your home screen.** baybay then opens full screen like an app, with no browser bar in the way — which matters a lot at 3am. [How to add it](https://baybay.baby/docs/home-screen.md).

## What you do not need to do

There is no setup wizard, and nothing has to be configured before baybay is useful. In particular:

- **You do not need to set up a schedule.** The [daily rhythm](https://baybay.baby/docs/the-daily-rhythm.md) is optional and most people add one later, once they can see a pattern worth writing down.
- **You do not need to fill in the past.** Backdating exists if you want it, but starting from now is fine — the charts only need a few days either way.
- **You do not need to add your partner yet.** That is one short code and takes under a minute whenever you are ready.

## Your dashboard will look empty, and that is right

> **Worth knowing**
>
> If you tried the demo, it came loaded with a week of sample data so the charts had something to draw. **Your own household starts empty**, and the demo's data does not carry over — it was somebody else's pretend baby.
>
> Log normally for two or three days and the dashboard fills itself in. Nothing needs setting up for that to happen. [What appears, and when](https://baybay.baby/docs/when-the-charts-fill-in.md).

## The rhythm after that

There is not much to it, which is the point. Tap the feed you gave when you give it. Start a sleep when they go down and end it when they wake. Look at the dashboard when you are curious, or when somebody asks how the week has gone.

Nothing has to be entered at the moment it happens — if your hands were full, put it in later and set the time back. [Logging something afterwards](https://baybay.baby/docs/i-forgot-to-log-it.md).

## If something goes wrong

The two most common first-week problems both have pages: [losing your address](https://baybay.baby/docs/i-lost-the-link.md) and [a sign-in link that will not work](https://baybay.baby/docs/my-sign-in-link-did-not-work.md).

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From [How to use baybay](https://baybay.baby/docs.md). baybay — Feed and sleep tracking for the first year, logged in two taps. Hosted for $7 a month, or self-hosted free on PHP and SQLite with no Docker and no build step. Everything one family logs lives in a single SQLite file they can export or delete.

Canonical: https://baybay.baby/docs/first-day