Your Baby's Height And Weight
All parents have a natural concern about their baby’s height and weight. However, there is not too much that you as a parent can do to change the natural course. Weight and height are largely genetic factors although some other issues can also be a factor (such as ethnicity and nutrition) but ultimately genetics is the main influence behind what your child will ultimately be in terms of weight and height. Your pediatrician will use growth charts to track your child's physical growth, measuring your baby’s length, weight, and head circumference at each check-up. The doctor can then compare the measurements for your baby to a chart of national averages for infants of the same age and sex. In this way the doctor will be able to tell you what percentile your baby is in when compared to averages for babies around the nation. For example, if your 4-month-old is in the 86th percentile for weight, that means 86 percent of the two-month-olds in your country weigh less, and that 14 percent weigh more. A baby that is at the 50th percentile in either height or weight is right at the national average. Parents seem to worry (sometimes obsessively) about these percentages, and that worrying is often needless. There are many factors that come into play when determining where your baby’s statistics will fall in the percentile chart. It is very important to remember that no two babies are the same and that every child, due to body chemistry, heredity, diet, and many other factors will grow at their own pace. Some babies will grow in sudden spurts from the very beginning while others may take longer to begin their main growth spurts. It’s important to remember that these indicators are only generic guides for a doctor to help in assessing your baby’s growth.
Further to the measurements that your pediatrician will take during regularly scheduled doctor visits, it is possible to record your baby’s growth at home (although these may not be as accurate as the measurements your doctor takes). These home measurements can provide a certain degree of insight into the growth of your baby. Here are some simple ways that can help you measure your baby’s growth at home using relatively common appliances. In case your baby is too small to stand up on the weighing machine, you can try using this procedure: Step onto a standard bathroom weighing machine while holding your baby in your arms. Note down the weight. Next, step onto the machine alone. See your own weight and subtract this number from the combined weight of you and your baby. This number is your baby’s weight. Simple but very effective. To measure your baby’s length you need to lay her down on a flat surface (if you have a changing table this works very well) and stretch a measuring tape from head to toes. For the measuring of head circumference you should wrap the measuring tape around your baby’s head. You should wrap the measuring tape just above your baby’s eyebrows, so the tape falls right at the top of the ears. What you are trying to measure is the point around his head that has the largest circumference. When taking your baby to pediatrician more accurate measurements can be produced. They have far more accurate measuring tools made specifically for the purpose of measuring the characteristics of babies, such as proper baby scales equipped with cradles. Your doctor may take measurements a few times during one visit and then average the results together for the sake of accuracy and to compensate for any anomalies that may have occurred. It is important for the doctor’s measurements to be as accurate as possible because an anomaly of as little as a few millimeters in length or a few grams in weight can make a difference where your baby falls on the charts. Since the results of these measurements may determine changes to your baby’s diet, and other possible changes to how your baby is fed and treated during her first year, it is important that these results are as accurate as possible. Your pediatrician will measure the following characteristics of your: Baby Weight: After calibrating the scale the doctor or nurse will place your baby on a special weighing scale. This will typically be a baby holding stainless steel cradle. After your child is able to stand on her own, your paediatrician will most likely use a standard upright scale. Baby Length: Like weighing, until your baby is able to stand up on his own, your doctor will perform the height/length measurements with your baby lying down. Your doctor may use a tape measure, much like you use at home, or may utilize a special “baby-measuring device”, which consists of a headboard and movable footboard to obtain the most accurate results possible. Baby Head circumference: This measurement will be taken in almost the same way you did at home. The doctor will take the measurement at the point where the head is at its largest circumference, right above the ears and around to the back of the head where the neck meets the cranium. Usually the pediatrician will record this measurement to the nearest 0.3 cm (1/8th of an inch). The head is different from other parts of the body in that the brain is not fully formed at the time of birth and therefore the head will continue to grow during baby’s first year. A Baby’s head is a particular point of concern for the doctor because a head that is growing too rapidly can be a sign of hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and a head that is growing too slowly can be indicative of nutritional or developmental problems. Regardless, you shouldn’t be too concerned if your baby’s head appears a bit disproportional compared to the rest of her body, as this is completely normal for the first year of life. It is also worth remembering that a baby’s initial birth weight, while a cause of anxiety for many parents, is not always a good indicator of how she will grow in future years. Premature babies for example do not always remain smaller than other children once they are several years old. By Lisa Lee
