European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Birth weight has been universally used as a measure of intrauterine growth, largely because of relative ease of its measurement and of its correlation with gestation.3. Weight is the most widely used single clinical indicator of growth. Fetal weight is the one single clinical factor of greatest interest to the neonatal pediatrician. All the singleton live born babies born in the hospital were examined with in 48 hours of birth. Gestational age was calculated by enquiring into 1st day of mothers last menstrual period and will be subsequently confirmed by New Ballard Score. Babies were weighed naked immediately after birth on lever actuated weighing scales to the nearest 50 g. The weighing machine was checked periodically by known standard weights. In the derived normogram based on birth weight and gestational age it was observed that there is a linear relationship of the birth weight with increasing gestational age. The birth weight increased linearly with the increasing gestational age upto 39 weeks, after which it started declining.