How Can You Measure Your Baby Growth And Development?

Baby GrowthMost of the parents are worried about their baby’s growth patterns.

Regular visits with the pediatrician can help to main the normal baby growth.

Your pediatrician can use growth charts as tools to keep track of your baby growth and development.

The doctor will measure your baby’s length, weight, and head circumference in each checkup.

Then the doctor compares your baby growth measurements to a chart of national averages for infants of the same age and sex.

Hence the doctor will be able to tell you what percentile your baby is in when compared to averages for babies around the nation.

There are many issues that come into play when determining where your baby growth statistics will fall in the percentile chart.

You have to remember that no two babies are the same and that every child depends on the body chemistry, heredity, diet, and many other factors. These measurements, charts, and percentile points are only guides for a doctor to help in evaluating your baby growth.

You can also track your baby growth at home, but the measurements you take at home may or may not be as accurate as the measurements your doctor takes.

Tips to help you to track your baby growth at home:

You can use commercially available scales and other measuring devices to measure your baby growth.

To measure your baby’s length all you need to do is lay her down on a flat surface and stretch the measuring tape from head to toes.

If your baby is too small to stand upright on the scale, you can try this procedure while measuring baby’s weight:

  • Keep your baby on your arms and stand on the measuring scale.
  • Note the weight displayed on the scale and write down on a paper.
  • Put your baby down and stand alone on the scale.
  • Note the weight and subtract this number from the combined weight of you and your baby. The result is your baby’s weight.

To measure head circumference all you need to do is wrap the measuring tape around your baby’s head.

You should wrap the measuring tape just above your baby’s eyebrows, so that the tape falls right at the top of ears. You have to measure the point around her head that has the largest circumference.

Usually, when the pediatrician records the baby’s head circumference, this measurement is nearest to 0.3 cm.

The head is different from other parts of the body in that brain is not fully formed at the time of birth and therefore the head will continue to grow during baby’s first year.

Among the parts of your baby’s body, head is a particular point of concern for the doctor. A head that is growing too rapidly can be a sign of hydrocephalus (water in the brain). A head that is growing too slowly can be indicative of nutritional or developmental problems.

Anyway, you should not be too anxious if your baby’s head appears a bit disproportional compared to the rest of her body growth, as this is completely normal for the first year of life.

The baby growth measurements that you take at home are not that much accurate. Pediatricians will perform the more accurate measurements about baby growth.

They do the baby measuring thing on a daily basis and will be able to achieve a much more accurate result than you will at home. They have very accurate measuring tools made specifically for the purpose of measuring the characteristics of babies.

Your doctors will more likely take baby growth measurements several times during one visit and average the results together to ensure correctness and compensate for any differences that may arise.

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.

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