Variation of growth in length and weight of children. I. Years 1 and 2.

As part of our work aiming at facilitation of growth screening, we analyzed the growth of 741 healthy infants from birth to 2 years of age. We 1) show that weight depends on length rather than age, 2) present new growth standards in a format which allows direct reading of relative length and relative weight, and 3) define the normal variation of changes over different periods in terms of relative length (SD score, SDS) and relative weight (deviation of weight from the median weight for length and sex, %DW). The group mean values for changes in length SDS and %DW were zero, but there were wide individual variations, which decreased with age and length. We present curves defining these variations for use in growth screening.