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The weight of healthy breast‐fed infants during the first year of life
Author(s) -
SYDOW. GERT V.
Publication year - 1940
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.1940.tb16000.x
Subject(s) - medicine , population , pediatrics , welfare , breast milk , demography , birth weight , breast feeding , physiology , pregnancy , environmental health , biochemistry , chemistry , sociology , biology , political science , law , genetics
Summary. A material that is t o serve as a normal material for the weight development of healthy infants must be anthropologically, geographically and socially representative of the population of which i t is to be taken as a norm, but must be selected in such a manner that factors that may disturb the normal development and health of the individuals are eliminated as far as possible from the material. I n a statistical analysis of the material the essential thing is t o obtain a measurement of the range of variation, while little importance is attached to the mean weight. The present material comprises 1 073 children selected from the clientele of the Children's Welfare Centres at Goteborg in accordance with the criteria mentioned above. The children were under the supervision of the welfare centres for at least 7 months (at leastfrom the 91st to the 300th day of life); they were fed mainly on mother's milk (500 gm. addition daily at most) for at least 180 days; during the period of observation they did not show any signs of malformations, congenital diseases, or affections that can be attributed to a constitutional predisposition, nor any other affections before the actual weigh‐ing. The children were divided according to sex and birth‐weight (600 gm. classes). and the mean weight and different limits of the range of variation in 20‐day periods during the first year of life are recorded for each group. The material may be regarded as a normal material for infants at Goteborg. In the absence of other investigations it is difficult t o determine whether the population of Giiteborg can be regarded as representative of the rest of Sweden and the other Nordic countries, but there seems t o be no grounds for assuming any considerable differences, and therefore for the present tlie weight curves may be used for practical purposes all over the country.