An amazing thing: the weight, and sometimes the growth with which the baby was born, turn out to be more than those indicators with which the crumb is discharged from the hospital. Where do these precious grams and millimeters go? Let's figure it out together!
Where are they - the boundaries of the norm?
They fit children, born with a body weight of 2600 to 4000 g and an increase of 46 to 56 cm. In this case, not only the absolute values of height and weight are important, but also the ratio of these values - the staff of maternity hospitals, as a rule, uses the so-called Quetelet index. Suppose a child was born with a weight of 3250 g and an increase of 50 cm. Dividing the first number by the second, you get 65. And the norm of weight, height and index of the baby is from 60 to 70. So everything is in perfect order! Enjoy this circumstance, this is a very good indicator. After all, if a child showed a deficit of mass in relation to growth (the Quetelet index below 60), it would be a medical diagnosis. In such cases, we are talking about intrauterine malnutrition - reduced nutrition, in the causes of which the doctor must necessarily understand.
Please note: all the calculations given here are applicable only to a full-term child who was born on time.
Real bogatyrs in diapers
Children who weighed at birth more than 4 kg, it is considered to be large. Some time ago, domestic pediatricians frightened Mom, declaring to them that such a kid - a direct candidate for diabetics. In reality, everything is not so terrible. The main rule - to adhere to all common sense. First of all, we are talking about nutrition. If you do not feed the baby, do not stuff it sweet, carefully protect against viral infections and various kinds of stress, consistently accustom to an active lifestyle, the threat of diabetes can be reduced to zero. Weight, height and performance of the baby are responsible for psychological functions in a small body.
Modern scientific research convincingly shows that such a threat is much higher in crumbs weighed at birth less than 2500 g. After all, they are transferred to a strengthened diet, and even when the body weight comes back to normal, a certain stereotype persists: Mom gets used to overfeeding the baby - after all, after all he was born so thin! We must try to avoid this mistake by any means!
Tip
Did you have a hero? First of all, take care of your own health. Go to the doctor and check the sugar content in the blood, make a biochemical blood test for glycosylated hemoglobin - this study shows fluctuations in glucose levels in the dynamics. The fact is that the birth of a large child can be regarded as an alarming symptom for the carbohydrate metabolism of the mother herself and causes doctors to exclude latent diabetes.
We consider the loss and profit
The weight, height and indicators of the baby indicated in the medical record with which he was discharged from the maternity hospital, as a rule, are always less than that with which he was born. Such a decrease in body weight in the medical language is called physiological. Do not be afraid of it - this is a natural process planned by nature. It is associated with the fact that the kid in this period is actively working kidneys and intestines, in addition, the part of the water contained in the body of the baby evaporates through the upper layers of the skin and lungs during breathing, but it still eats very little! After all, in the first two or three days the baby gets not milk, but colostrum is a kind of nutritive concentrate containing a maximum of proteins, fats and carbohydrates in the minimum volume. So the losses so far naturally exceed the flow. However, after 3-5 days, the crumb will begin to restore the lost one.
The main thing is that the body weight, weight, height and baby's weight should not decrease by 6-8%, and that the baby regains his initial weight by the 7th-10th day of life, and by the end of the first month he adds another 400-600 g, 200-250 g per week. But for the second month babies on the average gain 900-1100 g, compensating physiological weight loss, and in the third - 750 more. By the 4th-5th month the body weight doubles, and by the day it triples and on average reaches 10.5 kg . True, in the increase in weight, height and index of the baby there are some individual differences. So, in slender toddlers, it occurs much more slowly, in contrast to large children. On what, first of all, should our new mummy be oriented? Of course, the state of their own child!
Tip
Never compare your little one with other people's children of the same age. You should not be upset at all by the fact that they add the prescribed grammes faster than your child. If the baby is absolutely healthy, then everything goes as expected!
We weigh correctly
Some mummies recklessly believe that it is absolutely useless to weigh the baby at home, enough that it is done once a month in a children's polyclinic. However, pediatricians are simply convinced that it is necessary to monitor the weight of the child constantly. The fact is that the dynamics of body weight during the first year of life is the most important indicator of the physical development of crumbs!
Try to acquire modern electronic scales designed specifically for babies, and determine with their help the body weight of your baby if not daily, then at least once a week! If you can not buy these scales, they can be rented.
You can simply write to the notebook the weight, height and indicators of the baby, as well as the date of measurement and the result, but it is better to build weight curves, as doctors do. Such curves clearly reflect changes in infant weight in dynamics. Believe me, there is nothing complicated here! First, draw a horizontal axis, on which you will mark the days of the child's life, then - vertical, which will indicate the weight of the baby in grams. In accordance with the measurement results, you mark the points and connect them together. The weight curve is ready!
It is very important to weigh the baby, not from time to time, but following certain rules!
Do this at a specific time - preferably every morning before feeding or on the same day of the week. Spoon the diaper and remember how much it weighs, and then put the naked crumbs on it and remember the result. Do not forget to subtract the weight of the diaper from it before you write it down and postpone it on the chart.
The planned growth spurt
Never again does a child grow with such striking speed as in the first year of life. It is easy to see even on the changing mat and the bath: it seems that every day they literally diminish in size just before our eyes. And we can not talk about clothes! She has to store up all the time. The baby instantly grows out of almost brand new raspashonok and sliders. And this can not but please the young parents.
For a year, the crumb adds 25 cm (and the total is about 75 cm): for each of the first three months - 3 cm, from 4 to 6 months - 2.5 cm, from 7 to 9 months - 1.5-2 cm, from 10 to 12 months - 1 cm.
Many parents, accustomed to celebrating during the first 12 months the weight, height and performance of the baby, are later disappointed: the speed of weight-growth indicators is not so impressive. The main thing is that the figures correspond to the age of the child. However, it is indisputable to follow the process of growth of the first year - an engaging and responsible, and exciting for newly-made parents.
Once a week , laying the child on the back, measure the weight, height and performance of the baby from the top to the heel, straightening his legs. Only more cautious - in the first months the legs of the baby are bent, because they are in a state of physiological hypertonia. All the data received regularly and accurately recorded in the diary of observation of the child. And you can also build graphics by analogy with weight curves. Your pediatrician will find it useful! And you yourself can find very interesting patterns.
For example, if you measure the weight, height and performance of a baby every day in the morning and in the evening, it becomes apparent that the baby grows faster at night.
There are separate days when the increase in growth is small, and then there come a day, in which the baby grows up abruptly. Although the growth rate decreases with age, nevertheless, in the spring and summer the children are stretched more actively than in the autumn and winter.
If your baby was born in March, it is likely that it will increase even more than it should be, but in autumn and winter its growth will slow down a little more, and in general for the year will run in all the same 25 cm. Scientists went further - they regularly measured not only the length of the entire infant body, but also its individual parts. It turned out that they grow at different speeds! The feet and hands of the baby increase most quickly, the lower legs and forearms do not grow as actively, and the hips and shoulders lengthen even more slowly. Due to this difference, the proportions of the child's body change significantly during the year.
And can a crumb decrease in growth? Imagine what happens! True, this happens only in the first week of life. An extra pair of centimeters at birth can arise because of a birth tumor on the head. When the swelling subsides, and she resolves, it may turn out that the growth of the child, for example, is not 53, but 51 cm! And sometimes these extra centimeters disappear because the head of the baby, which has stretched in the process of giving birth, acquires the original, more round form, due to the fact that the bones straighten. By the end of the first month, the child will catch up with the lost, and even more! So do not worry!
And finally I would like to say that no matter how your baby grows, no matter how you add weight, height and performance of the baby, do not forget that he does it at his own pace. In a certain month a significant jump can occur, and in the next - the baby will develop more slowly. In addition to weight-growth indicators, pay attention to the general condition of the child: his appetite, sleep, mood.