Growing! (Ages 0-2)

Most new parents’ main concern is ensuring the growth of their precious new babies. At each visit to the pediatrician, we will measure weight, length and head circumference. These numbers are plotted on their growth charts which were created by the World Health Organization (WHO) to monitor for healthy growth.

The growth charts also tell us your child’s “percentiles”. For instance, if baby Cleo is 33rd percentile for weight, that means if you lined up 100 previously full term baby girls that are the same age as Cleo, 67 of them would weigh more than her and 32 would weigh less. Lots of parents want their child to be a high percentile, but what is most important to your pediatrician is that your baby is growing at the appropriate rate (doesn’t matter which % line!) and that the weight is at a healthy spot as compared to her height.

You can see by looking at the growth charts below that babies grow REALLY fast the first 3-4 months as indicated by the steep slope. After that growth slows some as the curve is less steep.

There are also growth charts designed to track children who were born prematurely or who may be expected to have their own particular growth patterns such as children with Down syndrome.

Some cool facts:

- Most newborns lose some weight initially, some up to 10% of their birth weight! The goal is to get back to birth weight around 2 weeks of age. Some babies, particularly breastfed babies, take a little longer. Your pediatrician will follow this closely to make sure everything seems normal.

- Growth spurts tend to happen around 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months of age.

- Babies tend to double their birth weight by about 4 months of age, and triple it by 1 year.

- You can get a quick estimate of adult height by doubling your kiddo’s height at age 2!

https://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/who_charts.htm