The weight of the child from birth to two years of life.

Carefully assessing weight growth in children and infants is an important tool for analyzing optimal development and to do this there are infant percentiles.

Weight of babies at birth

Newborn babies weigh on average between 3 and 3.5 kilograms, boys two or three ounces more than girls, but all newborns weighing between 2.5 and 4.5 kilograms are considered normal. A weight below the average may depend on the fact that the parents are shorter and thinner than the average, or it can be explained by the fact that the baby was born a few days or weeks earlier than the expected date, so it is not she had time to complete her intrauterine growth and thus to reach the right weight.

A weight above the maximum limit of the average can also be due to hereditary factors (tall and robust parents), or to a birth beyond the established term. It should in fact be considered that from the thirty-eighth week of pregnancy onwards the fetus increases on average about 30-40 grams per day and therefore a prolonged pregnancy beyond the term often leads to the birth of children a little larger than the norm.

Weight growth in babies from 0 to 3 months

In the first days of life, the weight of the newborn is reduced by approximately 5 - 10%. This phenomenon is attributable to an excess of fluids that the baby loses with sweating and with the emission of urine and meconium (the newborn's first feces); this weight loss need not worry so much that it is defined by the medical term of "physiological (ie normal) neonatal decline". Within five to seven days after birth, the baby begins to gain weight, so that the vast majority of newborns are able to recover and often even exceed, within ten days of life, the weight with which they were born. From now until the third month, including the infant, generally increases about 150-200 grams per week, but this reference parameter is purely indicative, since in reality the increase must always be related to the quantity of milk introduced.

Weight growth in the baby from 3 to 6 months

In this period, in general, the baby gains about 130-150 grams per week so that, on average, the weight at the end of the fifth month should be about double that presented at birth. However, it should be noted that the child's weight gain may not be constant: there may be weeks in which the baby grows more and others in which it increases less. It is not so important how much a baby gains weight, but rather that the growth remains constant and regular, without stopping for too many weeks in a row. It is therefore wrong to force the child to eat against his will, as often do some mothers whose child appears a little smaller than their peers.

Weight growth in the child from 6 to 9 months

From the sixth to the ninth month of life, the baby increases approximately 400-500 grams per month: at the end of the ninth month an infant weighs on average about nine kilos. From the sixth month onwards, however, weight gain is no longer related only to the quantity of food introduced by the baby, but also to its liveliness.

Weight growth in the child from 9 months to 12 months

From the tenth month to the first birthday, the weight gain should be a total of another 700-800 grams so, at the end of the year of life, a boy should weigh approximately 10 kilograms and a female 4 ounces less. . The difference in weight between two peers can however be considerable because, as already explained, weight gain is influenced not only by the child's diet and more or less frenetic physical activity, above all by hereditary factors. Although, in principle, pediatricians believe that by the age of one a baby should have tripled the weight presented at birth, there is absolutely no need to worry if a baby, who weighed 2.7 kg at birth, weighs it. , at the completion of his first birthday, 8.5, as well as it can be understood that it is normal that a newborn who weighed 4 kg at birth is weighing well above 10 kg per year of life.

Weight growth in the child from 1 to 2 years

The rather sustained rate of weight gain presented in the first twelve months of life will drastically reduce between the first and second year of life, during which children gain about two kilos and weigh about 12 kilos at the age of two.