Does my bub look big in this?

A friend recently posted one facebook that her one-year-old son had just had his 1 year check-up at the doctor’s, and proudly listed where his head, height and weight measurements put him in the paediatric percentiles. All were over 85%. People jumped on, congratulating her on these great results.

Another friend has recently been worried because her child was at the bottom of the percentiles. Neither she or her husband is particularly tall, so to an uninvolved outsider, baby’s “lagging behind” made perfect sense. She was just taking after her nearest relatives. To mum, this was a disaster and proof that breast-feeding wasn’t right for her baby. She wanted to be able to measure how much formula she was getting… and she started solids early too, just to “be sure”. This bub has recently put on a growth spurt (a few month AFTER the feeding changes) and mum is “relieved” that she is “normal”.

As a free-range kind of mum, I find both these stories fascinating. I do not undersand the obsession some parents have with measuring their offspring. I couldn’t tell you how much my 5-month-old weighs, or her length, or anything. What I can tell you is that she is plump, has plenty of wet nappies, her eyes are bright and she’s happy. That is much more important to me than knowing where she fits on a chart. I understand that mothers (and it really usually is just mothers) like to know that they are doing a good job, but a child is so much more than a series of statistics. Have we Western women collectively lost so much mother-craft that we need a chart to tell us our baby is OK? Why are we running to the doctor every time a temperature goes over 38? What is so terrible (or unusual) about a baby that gets cranky at 5pm? Why are we freaking out because bub has a cold?

I wish I had some answers. I’m too arrogantly self-assured to be worried, and too dismissive of the ‘measuring mums’ to actually find out what makes them tick. Maybe that’s something to work on.