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Height and weight gain for children of the first year of life.

Dear parents, your baby is growing and you are worried about whether he is gaining enough weight and height. For control, there are centile tables for assessing the physical development of children, weight and height indicators. At the same time, you must remember that each baby is individual, he cannot grow according to the textbook. These weight and height recommendations are based on an average number of children and 10% deviation is normal. In addition, the centile corridor from 25% to 75% is an average physical indicator. That is why they say: Physical development is mesosomatic, macrosomatic, microsomatic.

It is important that the weight and height indicators are in the same centile corridor, but no more than two adjacent ones. Then we can talk about harmonious development. If the gap is more than two centile corridors, the development is disharmonious. Then we can think either about an unbalanced diet or about a pathology associated with obesity (paratrophy), or protein-energy deficiency (hypotrophy). In addition, one should not forget about the constitutional characteristics of the child, about genetic predisposition. Therefore, in no case should you compare your child with a neighbor's. To talk about the health of a child, we evaluate his condition according to many criteria. This is neuropsychic development, laboratory examination data, anamnesis, heredity. How many times in my practice have I met children who gained 400-450 g in weight every month, by the year they barely gained 7.8-8 kg. But at the same time, children already at 10 months began to walk, pronounce syllables, and follow complex instructions.

We'll talk about weight and height gain for term babies. In preterm infants, rates of weight gain and height differ according to the degree of prematurity. In addition, children can be born with intrauterine malnutrition.

The tables for girls and boys are different in terms of numerical indicators, but at 1 year of age, these differences are quite minimal.

Centile tables for assessing the physical development of girls from 0 to 12 months.

At the same time, until the age of three months, the child adds 20-30 grams per day daily, respectively, from 140 to 200 per week. If we talk about the average weight gain by months, then it is only 600 g per month, since the child after birth has physiological weight loss (with urine, feces, transition from intrauterine feeding to breastfeeding during the adaptation period), approximately 10% of the weight, which is 200-300 grams.

More often, by 3-4 days, the child restores its original weight, and then there is an increase. But I had a case in practice when the child began to gain weight from the 20th day of life, while the girl was active, reflexes were alive, her appetite was good, she could withstand the night interval, stool 4-5 times a day, urination was sufficient, developed according to age. Therefore, do not worry. Our indicator is the well-being of the child. If the baby is active, eats with appetite, sleep is calm, the skin is clean, physiological functions are not disturbed, be calm, your baby is healthy and not hungry. You see from the table the range of weight per year is from 8 to 13 kg. This is the norm. There is no reason to run to the endocrinologist, genetics, to examine the child.

Or the opposite situation: in the first months of life, a child gains 1-1.5 kg while breastfeeding. If the baby does not have colic, he does not spit up, there are no gastrointestinal manifestations, he is active, the skin is clean, physiological functions are not disturbed - this is also the norm. Remember, as often happens, premature babies quickly gain weight and catch up with their peers by the year. And large babies gain weight more slowly. In my entire thirty-year practice, only two children weighed 14-15 kg by the year, although their parents were large and tall. By the age of three, they weighed almost the same, added only in height, the rest of their peers caught up with them.

It is believed that by 4-4.5 months the child should double the weight, and triple by the end of the year.

It happens that the increase in height and weight goes in leaps, seasonality, unevenness, and sometimes asymmetry of growth are noted. Pediatricians are concerned about the circumference of the head and chest, by 2-3 months they should be equal. Further, the breast grows faster. This is important so as not to miss the pathology.

The younger the child, the faster his growth. In the first 3 months of life, body length increases by 3 cm monthly, in the second quarter by 2.5-2 cm monthly. In the third - 1.5-2 cm, in the fourth - 1 cm monthly. The total increase in height in the first year of life is about 25 cm.

Centile tables for assessing the physical development of boys from 0 to 12 months.

In the second year of life, the child should gain 2-2.5 kg in weight, grow by 8-10 cm.

Thank you for your attention.

Weight and height of the infant

Immediately after birth, the infant is weighed and measured for height. Over the next months of life, the little man will undergo this procedure more than once,

after all, weight and height are one of the main indicators by which pediatricians evaluate his physical development. Norm or not?
It is important to know that not always high weight is an indicator of good health, and low weight is a cause for alarm. The body weight and height of a child at birth depend on many factors. First of all, from heredity. If the parents of the baby are tall and have a large body weight, it is likely that their child will be large from the moment of birth, and vice versa.
The average weight of a newborn baby ranges from 3,000 to 4,000 g with a normal gestation of 38–40 weeks. The growth of the crumbs in this case varies from 46 to 56 cm. A child with a body weight of less than 3,000 g (but 2,500 is still the lower limit of the norm!) Is considered underweight, and with a weight of over 4,000 g - large. According to statistics, boys are usually 100–300 g heavier than girls. It is also noted that firstborns usually weigh less than their brothers and sisters.
In addition, large children are born with various diseases of the mother, such as diabetes or thyroid disease. The birth of a small child can be the result of malnutrition, acute and chronic diseases, bad habits of the mother. Any violation in the system "mother - placenta - fetus" leads to malnutrition of the fetus and its abnormal development. No panic!
It should be noted that in the first few days after birth, the so-called physiological loss of body weight occurs. In a healthy full-term baby, it can be up to 10% of body weight at birth. As a rule, the maximum body weight of the newborn decreases on the 3-4th day after birth. This happens mainly due to a deficiency in the mother's milk, and also due to the loss of water by the baby (during breathing, with sweat), the discharge of the original feces (meconium) and urine.
With proper care and feeding, the baby's weight stabilizes and begins to grow by an average of 20-40 g per day, and by the time of discharge from the maternity hospital (by the 5th-10th day) it is completely restored. Recruiting!
In the future, the increase in body weight during the year on average occurs according to the following scheme:
• 1 month - 600 g;
• 2-3 months - 800 g.
Each subsequent month - 50 g less than the previous one (750 - 700 - 650, etc.).
With regard to growth, the child grows most intensively in the first three months of life - an average of 3 cm per month. In the future, the increase in growth is: from 3 to 6 months - 2.5 cm each, then 1.5–2.1 cm, etc. Excess or deficiency?
Equally bad as an excess of body weight, and its lack. Excess, as a rule, is a consequence of overfeeding the child. This is especially common with artificial feeding. It has been noted that most breastfed babies are lighter than formula fed babies. This is not a pathology. No need to overfeed a small child. He eats a little less than a large child, but that's enough for him. Gradually, eating his norm, he will catch up with peers who were born with a larger body weight, and maybe even surpass them.
Lack of body weight can be caused by nutritional deficiencies, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, pancreas, intestinal dysbiosis. A decrease or small weight gain can be observed after an illness, especially an infectious one.
You should also be aware that in the second half of life, the dynamics of weight may decrease, because the motor activity of the child increases.
Therefore, both with excess and underweight, in the first place, it is necessary to analyze the causes that led to this condition. Is everything in harmony?
When assessing physical development, the body weight and height of the child are compared with the average indicators for children of this age group. If body weight and height correspond to these indicators, physical development is considered average, if they exceed these figures, it is above average, and, accordingly, below average if the weight and height of the child are lower than those of their peers.
In addition to assessing body weight and height, it is necessary to evaluate the ratio of these two indicators. If the baby's body weight corresponds to his height or differs by plus or minus 10%, physical development is called harmonious. If the difference is from 10% to 25% - disharmonious, and if it exceeds 25% - sharply disharmonious.

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