Infant Growth Chart

Infants experience a massive amount of growth in a relatively short amount of time. At 6 months of age, typical infants have doubled their birth weight, and they triple their birth weight by the end of their first year. The infant body is constantly growing and expanding its physical, cognitive, and social development. Infants rapidly learn how to move and use their tiny body to accomplish many different tasks. A smile is usually the first sign of social interaction, and this occurs about 3 months from birth. At about this same time, a baby begins grabbing for objects within reach and cooing in attempts to communicate.
The most common criteria used to determine the health status of newborns are birth weight, length, and head circumference. During routine checkups throughout infancy, healthcare providers record these measurements on standard growth charts (see Figure 6.2).1

These charts reliably show growth of an individual child over time as well as allow
There are two different types of growth charts: the Growth Reference Charts, which are developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and Growth Standard Charts, which are developed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Both the WHO and the CDC growth charts are used as standards for growth. The WHO international growth charts are established for children ages 0 to 5 years. Similar to the 2000 CDC growth charts, these charts describe weight for age, length for age, weight for length, and body mass index (BMI) for age. The differences between the two charts are that the WHO charts are growth standards based on data collected in the WHO Multicenter Growth Reference Study and they describe the growth of healthy children in optimal conditions, whereas the CDC charts are based on growth references that describe how certain children grew in a particular place and