Mothers of young babies who've been worrying that their little ones aren't following the growth charts in the books given to them by their health visitor, may have been worrying unnecessarily. It turns out that the charts are so out-of-date that they might be responsible for mums overfeeding their babies.
The charts in the current books, given to all new mums, are based on statistics from before 1990 and are weighted towards bottle feeding. But new charts issued by the World Health Organisation [WHO] a year ago are based entirely on breast-fed babies who put on weight more slowly.
Although the charts have been readily available for over a year, the British government has still not come to a decision on when to introduce them into the red child health books. I Once these charts have been introduced, a quarter of the babies from the below average weight at one year zone will move into the average weight zone, explained Tam Fry of the Child Growth Foundation. 'It means that many fewer babies will be referred for 'failure to thrive' and lots of women will go on breast-feeding longer, because they won't be discouraged.'
The Department of Health says it 'hopes to issue recommendations to UK health departments by the end of June.'
May 2007
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