Paediatrics

Baby Girl Growth Milestones (0–24 Months): Tracking Height and Weight Progress

admin Feb 10, 2025

As the new parents welcome their baby girl into this new world, happiness, wonder, and joy fill their hearts. It is one of the most rewarding experiences for parents to watch their baby girl grow and progress by achieving various milestones. However, there may be endless queries from parents on their child's development. Here, we present a roadmap on various growth milestones for a baby girl from birth to their second birthday.

What are milestones:

Milestones are like checkpoints that babies achieve during their growth. There are emotional, communication, cognitive, and developmental milestones. The milestones vary between genders and between each child of the same gender, as every child has their own pace of development.

The World Health Organization has established the growth pattern of breastfed infants as the standard for growth, as breastfeeding is the standard feeding pattern. They used longitudinal length and weight data to assess growth and noted them on growth charts.

Terms to understand growth milestones:

Z-score: A z-score indicates how much deviation a particular length or weight of the child is from the average mean of a group of children compared with standard deviation.
Percentiles: The most common way to track child growth is by measuring length and weight compared to others of similar age and gender.

A growth chart records the baby's growth milestones. The main advantage of recording the growth chart is that it tracks the length and weight of the baby girl. The growth chart also helps to determine whether the girl is growing normally and to identify any deviation from normal. Growth charts include baby weight charts that track height and weight according to age.

How to record growth milestones:

The girl's length/height and weight are checked and plotted as dots on the charts. Measurements at every appointment are plotted on the growth chart and joined to form a curve. This curve assesses the baby's growth and checks the trend against the average population.

Interpreting growth charts:

The HCP does the growth chart to assess the baby's growth, which can then be understood as normal or abnormal. The growth of a typically developing child will be parallel to the median or slightly above or below the median.

Any sudden change in the growth chart trend is a matter of concern that needs investigation. The flat line in the growth chart does not indicate growth. The height weight age chart shows whether the baby's height is stunted. The weight chart according to age shows if the baby is underweight or suffering from nutrition conditions like marasmus or kwashiorkor.

Growth chart of Baby girl:

The growth chart below represents the average baby girl's weight and length. These height-weight age charts are taken as per the World Health Organization standards. The table below shows the baby weight chart and baby length chart. The values represent the 3rd and 99th percentiles.

Year/Month	Average weight (weight in kilograms)	Average length (in centimeters)
0/0	2.4-4.4	45.6-53.5
0/1	3.2-5.7	50.0-58.2
0/2	4.0-6.9	53.2-61.8
0/3	4.6-7.8	55.8-64.7
0/4	5.1-8.6	58.0-67.1
0/5	5.5-9.2	59.9-69.2
0/6	5.8-9.7	61.5-71.0
0/7	6.1-10.2	62.9-72.7
0/8	6.3-10.6	64.3-74.3
0/9	6.6-11.0	65.6-75.8
0/10	6.8-11.3	66.8-77.2
0/11	7.0-11.7	68.0-78.6
1/0	7.1-12.0	69.2-80.0
1/1	7.3-12.3	70.3-81.3
1/2	7.5-12.6	71.3-82.6
1/3	7.7-12.9	72.4-83.9
1/4	7.8-13.2	73.3-85.1
1/5	8.0-13.5	74.3-86.3
1/6	8.2-13.8	75.2-87.5
1/7	8.3-14.1	76.2-88.6
1/8	8.5-14.4	77.0-89.7
1/9	8.7-14.6	77.9-90.8
1/10	8.8-14.9	78.7-91.9
1/11	9.0-15.2	79.6-92.9
2/0	9.2-15.5	80.3-93.9

Baby girl growth milestones:

At 2 months, infants are happy to see faces, respond by smiling, react to sounds, watch around, hold their heads up, and move their arms and legs. Their head circumference ranges from 36.0 to 41.1 cm on a growth chart.
At four months, they smile and chuckle to get attention, start cooing, can open their mouths for a feed, hold their heads steady, hold a toy, keep their hands in their mouths, and try to rise on their elbows. Their head circumference ranges from 38.2 to 43.5 cm.
At 6 months, they can recognize familiar people, laugh, blow raspberries from their mouth, squeal, try to grab a toy, roll back, and lean on their hands when sitting. Their head circumference ranges from 39.7 to 45.2 cm.
At 9 months, they are afraid of strangers, can give many facial expressions, respond to names, react when leaving, blabber, bang things, sit by themselves, and sit with support. Their head circumference ranges from 41.3 to 46.9 cm.
At 12 months, they can play games, wave bye, search for hidden things, pull to stand, walk with support, and pick up things between their thumbs and fingers. Their head circumference ranges from 42.3 to 48.1 cm.
At 15 months, they can copy, point out things, clap, hug, say two-letter words, follow directions, stack things, take a few steps, and try self-feeding. Their head circumference ranges from 43.1 to 48.8 cm.
At 18 months, they can give hands, cooperate while dressing, say three or more words, follow one-step directions, play with toys, walk without support, scribble, and climb on and off. Their head circumference ranges from 43.6 to 49.5 cm.
At two years old, they can understand feelings, speak at least two words, point out body parts, use both hands, kick, run, walk a few stairs, and self-feed with a spoon. Their head circumference ranges from 44.6 to 50.4 cm.

Baby growth charts are essential to know the baby girl's growth and assess their health based on their charts. These growth charts help the HCP to tell if the baby girl usually is growing in weight and height. Based on the chart, they may advise appropriate measures for the child's proper growth.