What should my baby measure now? Fetal growth standards

While I was pregnant I had time to surf the net and investigate everything about babies' size, sensory development... I was very keen on all these things that make us feel our baby even more real.

My baby had an intrauterine growth retardation. He was always a lot below the average, but the doctor was great and he used to say: you are going to have a Ferrari, small but powerful. 

As I had a very difficult pregnancy and it was very important to check the fetal growth, every two weeks the obstetrician measured these things:

• Abdominal circumference
• Head circumference
• Femur
• Biparietal diameter
• Occipital frontal diameter

I think that normally, if everything is going fine, the visits to the doctors are just once a month or even less, but as I haven't had any other pregnancy I am not sure if every time you go, they measure all these things, I don't think so.

In our bellies, when our children are growing there are lots of things going on, and our obstetricians can help us to understand why our baby is too big or too small and prescribe medical tests if needed.

All babies are different, big or small when they are born, that does not mean they are going to stay like that forever and if they do, 'variety is the spice of life'. Nevertheless, it is great to know the size of our little babies in our bellies! If you know the length of the femur you can calculate your baby's length/height with ilmiobaby.

Here you can find some useful charts of different measures of fetal growth that can be taken with an ultrasound.

They are made by the University of Oxford and I got them from intergrowth21. They all start in week 14. Click on each picture to get them.