Growth Charts

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides the growth charts for babies and children. Your pediatrician may use these charts or those provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). You can download the various documents for your reference. Click on the links for the two forms for infants, by gender. If you are looking for more charts, such as the stature-for-age and Weight-for-age or the BMI-for-age for children and adolescents (2 to 20 years), click here to go to their website.

Boy Infants, birth to 36 months:

Head Circumference-for age and Weight-for-age percentiles

Length-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles

Girl Infants, birth to 36 months:

Head circumference-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles

Length-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles

Instructions on how to use the ‘Length-for-age and Weight-for-age’ charts:

To determine where your child is on the scale, find the child’s age by month along the bottom.  Move straight up the line until you reach the child’s weight, put a dot. Continue up the chart for the length section and put another dot here. Continue for all height, weight, and months that you have records. You follow the curved line to the right to find out the percentile number (5, 10, 25, 50,  75, 90 and 95) for your child at that particular age. Note that if you have any concerns, please contact your pediatrician.

These charts are a simple way to track the progression of your child. He/she may be perfectly healthy at either a low or high percentage. I think the main objective is to make sure they are maintaining or gaining, rather than losing weight. Always check with your pediatrician.

Also, if your twins were premature, they more than likely will fall into the lower numbers. You can also create a separate chart based on ‘adjusted age’.