New growth charts for babies - now out!

When I posted about growth charts based on breastfed babies in May last year, Kate (a fellow nursing mom who works at the National Nutrition Council) shared that the the NNC was working on the adoption of the 2006 WHO charts to the Philippine setting. About 2 weeks ago, I got an email from Kate telling me that the chart was now ready and they are now trying to disseminate it among health professionals. You can check out the National Nutrition Council's growth chart here.

From what I understand, the NNC's growth charts are more forgiving especially if your baby is not quite that big. For instance, in the NNC charts, at 3 months, normal weight for a baby girl would be 4.5-7.5kg. However, if you check the CDC chart, at 4.5kg, your baby will be between the 5th and 10th percentile and I'm sure your pediatrician will be saying that you are not feeding your baby enough and will direct you to supplement. How's that for a confidence buster?

On the other side, if your baby is about 7kg, she would still be considered within the normal range under the NNC charts but be overweight in the CDC charts as she will be above the 95 percentile.

In Naima's case, she is almost 26 months and currently weighs about 28lbs. or 12.7kg. Using the NNC chart, the normal range for her age would be 9.4-15.4kg. In the CDC chart, it's at 10.25kg (3 percentile) to 15.5kg (97 percentile). I realize that the difference in the charts would really matter if your baby is on the borderline of underweight and overweight. And usually, it would mothers with borderline babies who would be more vulnerable to supplementation or eventual cessation of breastfeeding.

You can download the CDC growth charts here and download this for the girls height/weight charts for birth-36 months.