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.
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graph paper diaries 
He is cute.
But Jonathan was a cute baby, too, and I was really cute. So – it may not last.
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Definitely at the 99th percentile in cute… beat out only by grandchildren.
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If babies weren't cute the human race would have gone extinct long ago. Cuteness is natural selection in action.
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True words. Who else could get away with multiple night time wakings for months on end?
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I'll accept him being beaten by grandchildren 🙂
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On the other hand, Jonathan did give you two REALLY cute granddaughters…so those genes have some use.
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Eeeeeee! He's adorable!
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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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