The issue of weight fluctuations in children is extremely important. After all, his physical and mental development directly depends on the normal state of the child’s body. More often than not, everyone worries about being underweight, although children also don’t need extra pounds. At the same time, as experts note, there are certain time periods when children can recover uncontrollably. And there are many reasons for this. Parents need to closely monitor their offspring to prevent the development of obesity, which in severe cases can cause disability and lead to death at a fairly young age. AiF.ru was told by a pediatrician, head of the all-Russian public movement “Council of Mothers”, initiator of a number of awards in the field of motherhood and childhood, author of books, at what age children can quickly gain excess weight and what needs to be taken into account in this regard. dedicated to motherhood and childhood, Tatyana Butskaya .
Average rates of increase during breastfeeding: table
Despite the fact that there are normative tables, during routine examinations the pediatrician takes into account not only weight gain, but also other indicators - skin color and condition, activity, level of development according to age, test results.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed average norms for weight gain in newborns, which are based on long-term observations of children, first on IV, then on breastfeeding.
Such tables make it possible to determine how well a child corresponds to general trends. But you cannot rely completely on them, since each baby grows at its own pace.
Up to a year
The normal weight of newborn babies is from 2.5 to 4 kg. If it is larger or smaller, the child is respectively called low birth weight or large. The average monthly weight gain rates for infants are as follows.
The baby recovers most actively from 2 weeks to 3 months. At this time, he has the right to gain from 500 g to 2 kg per month. Over three months, the total weight gain ranges from 1.5 to 6 kilograms.
Children on breastfeeding often recover a little slower than their artificial counterparts. This is not a cause for concern if the baby is otherwise well and the weight gain is not below the WHO minimum norm. A child’s weight at 4 months increases by 400-500 g, and this level is maintained at 5 months. By six months, over the entire life of the baby, the total increase is usually at least 3-3.5 kg.
After about six months, there is a tendency for increases to decrease. Gradually growing up, the child gains less and less every month - from 400 grams at the beginning of the second half of the year to 200 grams per month by the year.
According to the observations of pediatricians, large babies gain weight more rapidly than children with average or small weight. Genetics is responsible for the “correction” of the baby -
If everyone in the family is thin, and the baby is gaining weight closer to the lower limit of the norm, you should not worry that there is something missing in the milk and the child is not getting enough to eat.
You can use a special baby weight table:
It is believed that by six months the baby should gain the same amount as he weighed at birth - that is, double his weight. However, this is not a prerequisite, but only a guideline.
In the first few days of their new life, all babies lose a little weight. This is due to many reasons, for example, loss of excess fluid, passage of meconium. You can reduce physiological weight loss by making sure that the baby regularly receives colostrum - it begins to be produced during pregnancy, and in the first few days, until the milk comes in, it is necessary to put the baby to the breast so that he learns to suck and is saturated with colostrum.
The baby does not starve - with frequent breastfeeding, colostrum is enough to maintain a feeling of fullness, but not to create fat reserves. This role will be assigned to the milk, which will appear in a few days. Physiological weight loss should not exceed 8-10% of birth weight. If the weight drops more, you should consult a doctor: you may need to supplement with expressed milk or formula.
After a year
Weight gain after the child turns one year old becomes less intense, since he is much more active than before. Monitoring weight dynamics is no longer required as closely as in infancy - it no longer serves as the main indicator of normal development and is measured approximately once a year. More attention is paid to the harmony of development - the height-weight ratio is monitored.
This information can be presented in table form as follows.
These numbers are the upper and lower limits of the average norm. Weight above or below these numbers is considered high or low, respectively, and requires the attention of parents and a doctor.
What to do with a big or small baby
Parents do not have a reliable tool that can greatly influence the growth of a child. However, there are some patterns. A baby who is fed primarily with breast milk grows faster than when bottle-fed. A child living under the influence of harmful environmental factors grows slower than if he lived in favorable environmental conditions. In case of critical growth deviations, a doctor (endocrinologist) must conduct a diagnosis, identify the cause of the deviation and prescribe appropriate treatment.
Factors contributing to normal growth:
- breast milk from a healthy mother, - regular feeding, - taking vitamins and special medications, - fresh air, - special physical exercises (for older children).
Factors that interfere with growth:
- poor environment, - inadequate child care (the baby is starving, does not take vitamins, is not seen by a pediatrician, the mother smokes), - completely artificial feeding, - almost any disease.
Should you always worry if your weight is higher or lower?
In Western pediatrics, very little attention is paid to the issue of weight standards. They believe that the main indicator is the well-being and normal development of the child, corresponding to his age. Underweight is attributed to individual characteristics, and additional examinations are carried out more likely in connection with the problem of obesity, rather than underweight.
When breastfeeding, weight gain in a baby is an individual phenomenon. Therefore, small deviations from the average norm should not frighten parents if the child feels well and develops normally. The weight of a baby is often determined not only and not so much by the quantity and quality of feeding, but also by genetic predisposition. In families prone to excess weight, children grow up plump, and in thin parents, the child may gain weight at the lower limit of the norm; weight gain in children under one year of age is only an approximate guideline for the doctor.
Dr. Komarovsky is confident that the child should be relatively thin (if thinness is not associated with diseases) and active, and warns parents against overfeeding. Therefore, the mother does not need to try to adjust the baby to general standards and force him to eat more. But it is imperative to take measures to ensure that the baby receives enough nutrition - for this you need to properly organize breastfeeding or mixed feeding if for some reason there is not enough milk and its quantity cannot be increased.
Big increase
Excessive weight gain in infants is fraught with the problem of obesity. Excess weight harms overall well-being and the functioning of internal organs. If a child gains excessive weight while breastfeeding, this is a reason to consult an endocrinologist in order to promptly detect the cause of excess weight. In most cases, an increase above the norm (remember, more than 2 kilograms per month in the first 3 months of the baby’s life) is not associated with overfeeding and has other reasons.
There is no need to limit the child’s breastfeeding, because for a breastfeeding baby they also have a psychological aspect - this is contact with the mother, practically his “safe haven”, where it is warm, cozy and safe. Studies conducted by WHO show that overfeeding a baby with breast milk is unlikely to work.
In formula-fed children, excessive weight gain is associated with a large volume of formula or improper preparation, which makes it too nutritious. Since the child does not need to make much effort to “get” it, he easily eats more than he needs, starting to gain weight. In this case, you need to focus on an exact calculation: how much formula per day does a baby of this weight need at this age. It is not advisable to feed formula on demand - unlike breast milk, overfeeding with formula is quite possible.
If the baby's weight gain is higher than normal, the mother should adjust her feeding regimen or consult a pediatrician about the amount of formula. Consultation with an endocrinologist will also be useful.
Weight deficiency
There are many reasons why a baby may not gain weight well while breastfed. It is important to identify it correctly, because this is the only way to effectively solve the problem.
If your baby is not gaining weight or gaining little weight, pay attention to the following.
1. Technique for applying to the breast.
It is important to resolve this issue literally from the very first days, because incorrect attachment is fraught with trouble for both mother and child. If your baby doesn't latch on properly, it will be difficult for him to suck milk out effectively. The breast is designed in such a way that milk can only be extracted from it using a certain sucking technique. Correct latching ensures this technique, and the milk literally pours into the baby’s mouth on its own, the breasts are well emptied, and the baby receives a lot of milk in one latching.
If the attachment is incorrect, this does not happen, even if the baby is at the breast for a long time. In addition, when the attachment is incorrect, it hurts the mother during feeding, and cracks, abrasions, and abrasions may appear on the skin of the nipple. Pain during feeding is a sign that you need to pay special attention to breastfeeding.
In addition, if the attachment is incorrect, the baby will swallow air during feeding. Air takes up space in the stomach and prevents the baby from eating the right amount of milk. The air provokes excessive regurgitation, thereby reducing the amount eaten.
In most cases, latching is easy to correct, but there are situations when this is not enough: when some of the baby’s characteristics prevent him from sucking properly at the breast. Such features may be a short frenulum of the tongue - fortunately, it can be trimmed. Osteopathic problems can prevent the baby from extracting milk from the breast - the consequences of too fast or too slow labor, or an unsuccessful intrauterine position. In this case, a visit to an osteopath will make life much easier for both the baby and the mother. And then you need to work on improving your application.
If the baby sucks ineffectively, and this cannot be quickly corrected, it is necessary to supplement the baby with expressed milk or formula. A lactation consultant or a pediatrician competent in feeding management can help organize supplementary feeding and calculate its amount.
2. Diseases.
Illness in an infant can often be accompanied by some weight loss, especially if during illness he refuses to breastfeed and eats less. If, due to illness, it becomes difficult for the baby to suck, it is worth feeding him with expressed milk along with breastfeeding.
To determine the cause of the shortage, you need to notice the accompanying symptoms. For example, due to frequent regurgitation, colic and loose stools that accompany weight loss, problems with the gastrointestinal tract may be suspected. In this case, medical advice and assistance will be required. As a rule, in most situations, breastfeeding can be maintained.
3. Feeding mode.
The first recommendation for underweight is usually to increase the number of applications. You especially need to make sure that the baby actually eats and doesn’t get lazy and fall asleep on the chest without eating. In such a situation, feeding around dreams will help: it is advisable to feed the baby every time he wakes up, and at the end of each wakefulness. Also, with weak weight gain, it is imperative to maintain night feedings. The baby's dreams should not be too long. Remember that the baby can easily sleep hungry, so in a situation with low weight gain, the newborn needs to be woken up and fed as required. It is advisable that no more than 2-2.5 hours pass during the day from the end of one feeding to the beginning of another. But you can and should feed more often.
Frequent regurgitation without additional symptoms will tell the mother that some of the milk simply does not get into the baby’s stomach, so he is not gaining much weight. In this case, you should try to feed him more often, but in small portions, and be sure to wear him in a column after eating so that excess air can escape. And the problem of swallowing air is directly related to proper attachment to the breast. Spitting up a small amount after each breastfeeding is normal for babies, but if you are experiencing a lot of regurgitation along with low weight gain, this is a reason to consult a doctor.
4. Hereditary factor.
A thin child in a family of slender and thin people should not cause concern - most likely, this is a hereditary trait and there is no need to try to “fatten” him if he gains weight within the WHO norm.
However, if, according to the norm tables, the baby has very low weight, despite the fact that feeding is organized correctly and the baby receives enough nutrition, you need to consult a doctor to find out the reason why the baby cannot gain weight in accordance with the norm.
Be healthy, grow big
Every self-respecting mother does everything in her power to ensure that her child gains weight well. Introduces complementary foods on time and monitors compliance with the diet. He persuades the baby to eat a spoon “for mom, dad and Aunt Augusta”: they say, if you don’t eat well, you won’t grow big. In the minds of parents, the words “gaining weight poorly” sound worse than an air raid raid. But if a child gains weight too quickly, this is also a warning sign.
Of course, no one will diagnose an infant under the age of three as “obese”: he is too young and can still change. Paratrophy in children is not uncommon; It is possible that this “doughnut” will grow over the years and stretch into a reed. At an early stage, the doctor only states that the child is overweight, in accordance with the table of average indicators. We emphasize – averaged! Everyone understands perfectly well that each baby has its own pace of development. However, if your baby’s weight significantly exceeds the norm, the doctor is obliged to draw the parents’ attention to this. An additional cause for concern is that one of the parents is overweight. If both mom and dad are fat, it’s all the more worth focusing on the baby’s health and his diet.
Little secrets
Changes in a newborn's weight are an important factor that still needs to be monitored. Of course, you should not try to fit it to the standards of the table, but you cannot completely ignore this indicator. If the baby is underweight or overweight, parents should purchase home scales and weigh the child themselves at least once a week.
The main thing that a mother should remember is that there is no need to immediately try to supplement the baby with formula if the deviation from the norm is not too great. It may occur to you that milk is “empty,” but milk cannot be empty, since its composition is ideally adjusted to the needs of the child.
If the baby does not get enough of it, there may be errors in the organization of feeding, due to which the baby receives less milk, and lactation decreases due to lack of breast stimulation. In this case, you need to make efforts to normalize lactation, and not switch to formula. But in a situation where the baby has gained significantly less weight
norms, there is no point in delaying supplementary feeding. The introduction of supplementary feeding will help to quickly compensate for weight deficiency, at the same time, measures to establish breastfeeding will help increase the amount of milk, and gradually supplementary feeding can be reduced or abandoned completely.
How to weigh a baby
To track your baby's weight dynamics at home, it is best to weigh him once a week at the same time of day. It is advisable to weigh the baby in a good mood, so that he lies on the scale calmly for a few seconds, and the scale readings are as accurate as possible.
To find out whether the baby has gained normally in a week, you need to multiply the resulting difference in weight by 4. For example, if the baby has gained 150 grams in a week, then when multiplied by 4, the result is 600 grams in a month. For babies under 3 months, this increase is considered below average, but falls within the normal range. Well, if the baby gains 200 grams per week, then in a month it turns out to be 800. It is advisable to monitor how the baby’s weight progresses while work is underway to increase the amount of milk.
As for control weighing, in which it is supposed to determine how much the child ate at one feeding, there is no particular point in this measurement. The fact is that the norms for one feeding are often calculated based on the fact that the baby eats 6-8 times a day. But such feeding rhythms are more likely to be characteristic of artificial babies, and not of infants. Infants can latch on to the breast 12-18 times, in some cases even more often, which means that the portion per feeding will be half as much, and the baby eats different amounts of milk at different feedings.
Wet diaper test
A wet diaper test is often used to assess the amount of milk a baby is getting. To do this, you need to give up disposable diapers for a day and replace them with regular cloth ones, putting them aside after each wetness. By counting the number of wet diapers at the end of the day, you can determine whether your baby is getting enough milk.
- from birth to 2 weeks. The normal number of wet diapers can be calculated using the formula: child’s age in days plus 1;
- up to 6 months - at least 12-14 wet diapers;
If you are uncomfortable giving up disposable diapers, and you need to count the number of urinations, you can put a gauze pad in the diaper and check once every hour and a half to see if it is wet. You can't tell from a disposable diaper if your baby peed there once, and a wet gauze lining won't let you make a mistake. This way you can accurately calculate how many times your baby peed per day.
Please note: if you supplement your baby with water, you need to take this into account when counting urinations. A baby who gets a lot of water can pee many times a day, but at the same time gain weight poorly - because water does not help the baby gain weight.
Doctor, is this a disease?
If a child is obese, perhaps this is one of the signals of a disease: for example, disruption of the endocrine glands or nervous system, hypertension syndrome.
However, a competent pediatrician will refer you for a consultation with the appropriate specialists - an endocrinologist, cardiologist or neurologist - only if, in addition to excess body weight, he notices other symptoms. For example, a child is not just plump, but also lethargic, drowsy, with pale skin, sleeps poorly, is constantly cold and suffers from frequent constipation. In this case, a specialist may suspect a decrease in thyroid function - hypothyroidism.
Excess weight in a child cannot but alert the pediatrician
By the way, in case of disruption of the endocrine system, excess body weight may not be a consequence of the disease, but a cause. It is believed that excessive amounts of adipose tissue may contribute to the development of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Excess weight is not good for the cardiovascular system and for bones that are not yet strong: in the case of obesity, children have a high risk of increased blood pressure, as well as the development of scoliosis and flat feet.
Boys and girls: is there a difference in increase
Of course, boys and girls gain weight differently. In infancy, boys almost always outstrip girls in both height and weight, which is why tables with standards provide different graphs for both.
In order to find out how much a girl should weigh, you need to find exactly the “girl’s” chart so as not to panic and try to fatten her up to boy standards. WHO specifically issues standards for boys and girls separately.
Of course, here everything is very individual - there are large girls and fragile boys, the constitution, as already mentioned, often depends on genetics. Therefore, you don’t need to look up to your neighbors and playmates. Each baby has its own, individual development program, and parents only need to create conditions to ensure that the baby receives enough nutrition and make sure that weight gain fits into age norms for his gender.
Volumes by inheritance
There are entire “well-fed families”: it seems that everyone in the household is healthy, but the dad has a pot belly, the mom has a full body, and their children are quite plump. For a long time, it was generally accepted that in such cases the child gains excess weight for genetic reasons: you can put children on a diet and exhaust them with physical exercises as much as you want - they still won’t lose weight, you can’t argue with genes. This point of view is contradicted by an interesting fact: adopted children who are taken in by plump spouses, in most cases, also become plump over time. This means that it is not so much the hereditary factor that is at work here, but rather the family type of nutrition. If parents love fatty and sweet foods, are used to having dinner in front of the TV and eating up at night, kids quickly learn the same stereotypes; The result is obesity in children.
Even if the cause of family obesity is “written” in genes (which, by the way, does not happen very often), no one has canceled the need for a balanced diet for the child and a healthy lifestyle. After all, it is not the obesity itself that is genetically determined, but the predisposition to it.
The first data about the baby
In the first minutes of a baby’s life, doctors are required to measure height, weight, chest and head circumference. It is these indicators, as well as their ratio, that reflect the adequate development of the newborn in the womb, and in the future they will show his normal growth.
Head sizes that go beyond the normal range are a reason to examine the baby for a number of congenital pathologies. Insufficient body weight will force pediatricians and, of course, parents to increase the baby’s nutrition from the first days so that he can cope with adaptation to a new world for him.
The following ranges of parameters are considered norms for newborns:
- Weight – approximately 2.6-4 kg.
- Height is about 46-56 cm.
- Head circumference – within 34-36 cm.
- Chest circumference is approximately 32-34 cm.
But every inexperienced mother should know that in the first days the baby will lose a little, and this is the norm. It could be 100, or maybe 350 grams. As you can see, there are no clear norms and parameters that would indicate a uniquely healthy newborn. Moreover, all indicators are assessed only in relation to other data.
Clean Plate Society
What leads to childhood “overweight”? In many cases, the parents' attitude is that everything that is put on the plate must be finished. Even if it is a obviously unloved dish. Even if there is something on the plate that is purely unhealthy and, in addition, fatty, but served at a party. In this situation, sooner or later the child learns this stereotype: even if you feel full, you have to eat more and more, because those around you expect this from you.
The quality of food also plays a significant role. The predominant fats and carbohydrates in the diet of the family - and therefore the child - lead to extra pounds. Semolina porridge with jam, buns and cakes, roast goose and pork chops are a direct path to cheeks and folds.
But overfeeding and poor nutrition at an early age often leads to metabolic disorders in the future. It becomes easier for the body to process fats than proteins. An expanding stomach requires more and more food.
“Getting fat” can happen in two ways. The first is that fat cells fill with fat and swell. Secondly, they are crushed, divided, that is, their number increases.
The first case is easier from the point of view of losing weight: you should limit fatty and sweet foods in your diet, go in for sports, and the weight will go off. And if the cells have multiplied, their excess number will not go anywhere. How can you lose weight here? So: at an early age, excess weight gain most often occurs according to the second method. Therefore, if you know your baby is prone to obesity, you should monitor his diet especially carefully.
