Sunday, January 13, 2013

This post has a gratuitous cute baby picture in it

But not right up front, that would put me in mommy blog territory.

Last week's post about breastfeeding reminded me that I had mentioned back in August a few things about baby growth charts, and how some odd numbers had actually been part of a series of events that led to me having an urgent c-section.  I figured since I'd brought it up, I should update you all.

The little lord is growing just fine.  He's actually quite the textbook little baby....literally.  If I read any book that says "around week 16 this will happen" he's there +/- 3 days.  If it says he'll want to eat every 3 hours, he's there to the minute (he did this 7 times in a row once, to the minute).  If you wanted to write a textbook about a baby, you could come watch my son.  I've come to realize predictability is an amazing quality in a baby.

As of his last checkup he was 40th percentile for height and 30th for weight.

Interestingly, the biggest reaction I get when I tell people that he's 30th for weight is "how much more is he supposed to weigh?  He looks fine to me!".

I think this is another interesting misunderstanding of the height/weight charts.  Average is not necessarily the same thing as normal.  Normal can be a broad spectrum, average is just one number.  My baby is normal, thankyouverymuch.

After a few of those comments, I went and took a look at the growth charts.  In reality, the differences between the percentiles are quite small.  The difference between the 25th percentile and 50th percentile at 4 months is around 1 lb.  That's about the same as the difference between the 50th and 75th as well....so half of all babies fall in the same 2 lb range (or at least half of all babies in the group they used 40 years ago to make the charts. That range doesn't change much....it's about +/- .6 kg up until a year.  The differences on the more extreme ends get bigger as the months go by....at birth the difference between the 5th percentile and the 50th is .6 kg and at a year it's 1.6 kg.

All right, now that you've sat through all that metric system, here's the baby picture I promised (and yes, he's labeled in this picture....5 months old):
I told you he was cute.

9 comments:

  1. He is cute.

    But Jonathan was a cute baby, too, and I was really cute. So - it may not last.

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    1. On the other hand, Jonathan did give you two REALLY cute granddaughters...so those genes have some use.

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  2. Definitely at the 99th percentile in cute... beat out only by grandchildren.


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    1. I'll accept him being beaten by grandchildren :)

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  3. If babies weren't cute the human race would have gone extinct long ago. Cuteness is natural selection in action.

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    1. True words. Who else could get away with multiple night time wakings for months on end?

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  4. Andrew, for at least the first year, was down in the 5% for height & 10% for weight. But that was using the old APA chart, not the WHO breastfeeding chart. And if you looked at his height/weight ratio, it was right at 50%. He always looked really healthy to me, so I just shrugged my shoulders & said, "Whelp, someone's kid has to be at the bottom."

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    ReplyDelete