There’s nothing more boring than a moaning woman in labour, but what if you could play on your iPhone throughout the whole ordeal without any recriminations whatsoever? Step forward the contraction timer app.

I’ve been able to find 17 applications that are specifically designed to monitor the duration and frequency of your wife’s screaming while she is making a right meal of childbirth:

• Baby’s Coming (free) – Dadgets.info top choice
• Contraculate (free)
• Contractulator (free)
• TapTimer Lite (free)
• Contractions (59p)
• Contraction Master (59p)
• Contraction Timer & Fetal Kick Counter (59p)
• iContraction (59p)
• iPreg (Pregnancy iTool) (59p)
• Labor Mate (59p)
• NineMonths – Contractions & Movements (59p)
• Birth Buddy (£1.19)
• Contractions Alert – Baby Boy (£1.19)
• Contraction Tracker (£1.19)
• iStork (£1.19)
• Baby Time – Pregnancy Contraction Timer (£2.39)
• Expecting (£2.99)

So which one would I recommend? Well, my choice of contraction timer has got to be the completely free Baby’s Coming. Its first killer feature is that it keeps timing, even when you exit the app or shut down the phone. This means that you can pretend to be studying statistics of contraction frequency and duration, when in fact you’re just passing time with a bit of Super Monkey Ball. Not all contraction timer apps have this feature, so be sure to check up first.

Secondly, Baby’s Coming just has a lovely, clean, simple interface. There are no fancy pink backgrounds or cutesy images of babies – it’s a simple, honest, timing application that a man can use with pride.  I also love the ability to view average duration and frequency (over the last 5 contractions) right there on the one simple main screen. You can also look back at the history of contractions to pinpoint the exact precise moment that you were called a *&^*%$ ^&*$*%. This evidence could be priceless when trying to seek authorisation for future Dadget purchases.