Weighing Newborn Babies
When a baby is born, the attending doctor or midwife will generally weigh the baby. Weighing newborn babies is an important part of ensuring their health and wellbeing.
Why Newborns are Weighed
Newborns are weighed for numerous important reasons:
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- Assessing health: A baby’s weight can help healthcare professionals gauge the health and development of the newborn. It can indicate if the baby is underweight, which could be due to any number of conditions, or if the baby is overweight, which could be an indicator of high sugar levels.
- Charting progress: Weighing babies also helps healthcare professionals determine how the infant is growing and developing. The weighing might occur as often as every day to once a week.
- Record keeping: The information gathered from weighing a newborn baby helps to create a medical record of the baby’s health over time.
Graphing Weights
The information gathered from the newborn baby’s weight is recorded and then graphed. This graph visually demonstrates the baby’s development over time. The graph can be used to make sure the baby is staying within a healthy weight range. It can also indicate if there are any medical concerns that need to be addressed.
The graph of a newborn baby’s weight will often display two lines. The thicker line on the graph generally indicates the average of the infants weight. The thinner line indicates the infant’s actual recorded weight.
Conclusion
Weighing newborn babies is an important component of good healthcare. When the baby’s weights are tracked and graphed, it can help healthcare professionals to more easily monitor the baby’s growth and development. This is an invaluable practice that can help to ensure the long-term health and wellbeing of both infants and their families.