I am not in a competition

Growth charts are not a league table.

Growth is not a competition. We are all born with a blueprint based on your family genetics.

Some people are born to be tall and lean. Others are destined to be short and stocky. People from parts of the world have generations of typical body types which travel with them through genetics when they migrate.

Plotting the individual changes in infants at different stages is not about comparing their progress against others. Your child is being tracked against themselves and it is their point on their growth curve which matters. If your baby has been tracking along nicely on the 25th percentile for height, you know that 75% of children their age are taller. And the same applies with weight.

When we misinterpret how Growth charts work and become aspirational about weight gain, we add unnecessary pressure to infant feeding. Moving a child from their consistent curve to a higher one is not necessary. Even a temporary dip is not automatically a problem. There is usually a reason for that.

Getting together with family and friends and comparing how our babies grow in comparison with each other is not helpful. The population used to measure normal infant growth was much bigger than the half a dozen babies in your parents group! It's not a race. It's not a competition. It is individual and an indicator of healthy development alongside other measures like meeting milestones.

Happy. Healthy and developing typically is our goal.