How Child Growth Charts Work

Dr. Sears: Well, let me explain to you how those growth charts work, all right. So when the doctors office, each time you’re in the doctor will plot out the height and weight but what are all those curves and graphs. I mean it can be pretty confusing but I’m just going to explain in general how a baby can be pretty small or pretty big and still be normal as long as they’re tracking along their growth curve, you can see this baby is at the bottom of the growth birth but each check up they’re gaining the right amount of weight so they’re following along a curve.

Conversely, a baby could be pretty big but still following along the growth curve, both of these are normal and that’s a pretty wide range but let’s talk about McKenzie a little bit here. So do you remember how much he weighed when she was born?

Female: She was seven pounds, 11 ounces.

Dr. Sears: So seven almost eight pounds so that’s pretty average and how tall was she?

Female: 21 inches.

Dr. Sears: 21 inches so she was tall, little baby and how about when she was say six months old.

Female: Actually have those I brought them with me because too many her own mother.

Dr. Sears: Yeah, right.

Female: At six months, she was 14 pounds, 10 ounces.

Dr. Sears: Okay 14 at six months so almost 15 pounds that’s about here so still about good and then her height.

Female: 27½ inches.

Dr. Sears: Wow, she was staying nice and tall and then say what about when she was a year old.

Female: Tell me when you were a year, 18 pounds, 5 ounces.

Dr. Sears: Oh wow so she was 18.5 at one year so she’s starting to drop out a little bit on the growth curve, what about her height?

Female: 31½ inches.

Dr. Sears: 31½ so she’s okay then now she’s 18 months and where is she now?

Female: She is at 18 pounds one ounce.

Dr. Sears: Okay, 18 pounds 1 ounce at 18 months that’s down here.

Female: And then still 33½ inches.

Dr. Sears: And 33½ inches and she is a tall one. Looking at her height first you can see her stage is really consistent, really nice growth curves so she’s just shooting way up there and that’s a good sign okay. Now but looking at her weight, we can see from 12 months to 18 months she actually lost weight.

Female: And that’s the kind of concern.

Dr. Sears: And I see that a lot in my office and parents can be concerned about it but this is when the kids start running around, walking and they’re burning a lot of energy plus they kind of become picky either so I see this a lot and not necessarily, I usually don’t worry about it too much if I see a height curve like that because if kids are growing in their height that means their hormones are working well.

All right, so I think this is probably just more of a normal toddler deep so if you see her weight curve it’s kind of trending down falling off the chart and I don’t want to see that keep going like that. So I want to make sure she’s eating well, lots of good nutrient, dense foods, avocado, whole wheat, pasta, whole wheat bread things like that because I want her growth curve to go like this to come and get back in to the normal, all right.

Female: Yes.