section 2
Monitoring height and weight
0-3 months
meeting
15
Let’s review:
Once the meeting starts, welcome everyone and ask the participants: • Who can help us remember what we talked about in our last meeting? • Who was able to do the activity at home that we asked you to do at the end of the meeting? How did it go? • Does anyone have questions or concerns after doing the activity?
What are we going to learn? The importance of keeping track of a baby’s growth.
Let’t talk about it! We are going to look at some pictures to talk about what we know about this topic.
What should a healthy baby be like at the age of 0-3 months? How can we be sure that the baby is healthy? How can we compare the growth of one baby to the growth of another of the same age?
Why is it important to monitor the height and weight of a 0-3 month-old?
section 2 / 0-3 months • meeeting 15
58
Activity:
“The growth curve” We are going to learn how the growth curve chart works so that we can make sure that our baby is growing well.
What we’ll need: A height and weight control card (it can be a big copy on a sheet of
WHAT WE’LL DO: paper) • Show the parents the growth chart and what the normal height and weight is for a child at each age. • Next, show the parents how to measure the weight and height of their babies using the correct scale for their age. • Help the parents place their child’s measurements on the chart to see if he or she is growing normally or is malnourished. • When the group is done measuring, remind them of the importance of breast-feeding (Meeting 8) and about the vitamins and nutrients they should supplements their children’s diets with if possible. Other suggestions: Make sure to refer the babies in danger of malnutrition to a clinic for better control and so that the mother can get help feeding her child.
Summing Up:
What did we learn today? Now, we’ll review what we discussed today. • How do you feel after this meeting? Why? • What are the two most important things you’ve learned today? • What will you do differently based on what you learned during the meeting? • What did you like the most? Are there things you didn’t like? • Do you have any remaining concerns or questions about what we talked about? To finish, what would you recommend to improve today’s meeting when we do it again with another group. (Explain that answering this question will help the meeting be even better in the future for parents with small children.)
Facilitator’s Manual
59
To do at home:
• T he adults in the house should make sure that the nursing mother is getting enough of the different foods grown in the region. • Take the baby to the clinic to get the supplements of vitamins, iron and zinc that the baby needs, according to his or her age.
Basic information for the facilitator: Learning more about monitoring height and weight: 1- Breast-milk alone is the only food and drink an infant needs in the first six months of life.
After six months, a child needs a variety of other foods in addition to breast-milk to assure healthy growth and development. In the first six months, when a baby is most at risk, exclusive breast-feeding helps to protect against diarrhoea and other common infections and gets the baby off to a good start in life.
2- A young child should grow and gain weight rapidly. From birth to age two, children should
be weighed frequently to assess growth. If regular weighing shows that the child is not gaining weight, or the parents or caregiver see the child is not growing, something is wrong.
3- Regular weight gain is the most important sign that a child is healthy, and growing and
developing well. From birth to one year of age, infants should be weighed at least once every month, and from one to two years of age at least once every three months. Whenever a child visits a health center, he or she should be weighed, which can help detect growth faltering early on and appropriate actions can be taken.
4- Each young child should have a growth chart that shows if the child is growing in
accordance to his or her age. The child’s weight should be marked with a dot on the growth chart each time he or she is weighed, and the dots should be connected after each weighing. This will produce a line that shows how well the child is growing. If the line goes up, the child is doing well. A line that stays flat or goes down is a cause for concern and means the child should be seen by a health professional to help diagnose the cause.
section 2 / 0-3 months • meeting 15
60
Facilitator’s Manual