Pro tips on how to weigh baby at home
As a new mom or as a parent, it can be pretty worrisome to fuss about your baby in its first months. However, this much is normal, and it shows you how much you care about your little one. Now, you might not understand it yet, but as they grow, keeping track of their weight will be helpful to you. This is why you want to make sure that you fully understand how you can do this at home.
It is not that hard to weigh your baby as long as you know how to weigh the baby at home. The good news is that you can weigh them with any scale you have at home. If you are considering doing this, below are some pro tips that you might find to be useful.
Why should you weigh your baby often?
As this might be your first baby, you might be wondering why it is necessary for you to monitor the weight of your baby. First of all, you want to have some peace of mind and knowing how much your child weighs gives you that. It helps you to learn more about the baby and how he or she is growing. To give you an idea about why it is important, here are some reasons why you most definitely should do it at least once a month. You can also read how to take care of a baby.
Monitor their growth
It is no secret that the more you measure your baby’s weight, the more you are able to ensure that they are growing properly and according to the regular standards there is. There is one for girls and another for boys so you ought to check that. Knowing that your child is growing at a correct or normal rate allows you to have that peace of mind that you want. On the other hand, if they are not, you are then informed that something might be wrong.
This could be that you are not feeding them enough or you are feeding them too much, but nevertheless, it gives you an idea that something is wrong, and you can consult your trusted pediatrician about it. You want to address potential health issues early on. At the same time, this can also be something to put in your baby’s memory book. The problem will be if you do not know how to weigh baby at home, which is why you need to learn about that.
Enough feeding
Feeding your little one can be a tough task considering that they are not able to handle a large amount of food at first since they are still very small. However, it is also possible to overfeed them by giving them small amounts of food a lot of time. This is why you need to learn how to handle this well. But how does a parent know if they are giving too much or too little to their child?
The answer is by weighing them properly and checking them out. By keeping track of how much your baby weighs, you will have an idea about what to do. You can even weigh them before and after they eat to see if you think they have eaten enough. Of course, if you have any doubts at all, you can always contact your trusted pediatrician to help you out.
Possible health issues
Another reason to learn how to weigh baby at home is that you want to monitor them and see if there is any possible health issue that you need to worry about. For example, when you breastfeed at irregular times, they might be burning too many calories and can lack growth. Checking their weight and seeing that they are not getting any heavier than they should be can be quite alarming. You want to make sure to check for all of the possibilities. It can also be that your baby has jaundice and is not interested in eating and more sleep. There are a lot of things that you might want to check on, and certainly, knowing their weight will help you out with this.
Ways to weigh your baby in your home
There is actually more than one way to measure your baby at home, depending on the scale that you are going to use. Worry not, as you do not really need to buy a specialized scale if you already have a regular scale at home. To give you an idea about it, below are some of the ways that you can weigh your little one.
Specialized baby scale
Without a doubt, this is the right scale for the job, but you do not necessarily need to use one. However, as this one is specially made for babies, you can be sure that it is going to be the easiest to use. These are normally smaller than your regular scales, and it is by far very prices. You also get features that make it comfortable for your baby. It has the tare function, which makes things easier for you. For example, you can lay a blanket over the scale, press the tare button and then measure your baby, and the weight of the blanket would not be included. This is one of the ways how to weigh a baby at home that you should definitely know.
Kitchen scale
While people think that they cannot weigh their baby using a kitchen scale, it is actually by far more useful than your bathroom scale since it is more precise. What you can do is to remove all the weight that is on it by pressing tare and then measure your baby like you normally would all your other kitchen things. Although, it would be good to find something you can put your baby on, like a tub, before you measure.
At the end of the day, learning how to weigh a baby at home is convenient for a parent, especially a first-time parent, and that is exactly why you ought to know about what you can use to do that. It does not require a lot of things, but it is going to be extremely helpful for you in the long run.
