Child Health Book

This is aimed at new parents as many people dont realise the value of these little books.  It seems that in most countries these days we (parents) are provided with a little book in which to record all the details of our childs physical development and other milestones that can be measured. 

I am in the UK, so details may change from place to place.  Essentially these little books contain space for you to record your childs development.  Mine has little space for scribbling my own notes in, so I attempted to keep a seperate diary of words etc but mostly they ended up in emails to my mother or on pieces of paper and consequently lost not in the correct book.    Mum recorded ours in our Plunkett Books (we were in NZ) and it is so nice to look back now and see how my speech and movement developed.  Some of the words are real cute. 

It is a good idea to keep this book in your baby bag.  Should anything ever happen when you are out and about you then have it handy.  I only ever carried mine when we went to NZ.  I forgot for all the other trips we made - it was on my list of things to take, but i always forgot - duh! - Thankfully she only got unwell one time, and that was this year and they were able to contact my health visitor for the details they wanted because I knew the number and had it on my phone.

In this book should be details of your nurse, clinic, doctor, pediatrician, and any other important people and numbers that you may find useful in those first weeks and months.  General information of family health problems that the child could possibly be affected by.  My brother developed MS aged 15.  So I put that in the book - unlikely to affect E, but good to record all these things anyhow.  Include heart conditions, diabetes, etc as well.

Immunisations are recorded in this book, as are the details of the regular checkups.  6-8 weeks, 6-9 months, 2 years, 3 years, and pre-school reviews.  These will check up on things like how their umbilicus is healing,  their hearing, vision, recognition of pictures, locomotion, crawling/walking, speech and language skills, social interaction and so on.  Thre are some specific things they look for each time, and some are just general. 

There are loads of bits of information and guidelines for (approximately) how your baby/child should be developing and at the very back of the book are the growth charts.  Weight, length/height, head circumference, and last but not least the calculation so you can estimate your childs height and weight based on their parents and their birth measurements. 

Calculation (for a girl):  (I dont have for boys sorry as I dont have a son yet)

MPH = Mid-Parental Height
MPC = Mid-Parental Centile
TCR = Target Centile Range

(a) = father's height
(b) = mother's height
(c) = sum of (a) and (b)
(d) = (c) divided by 2
(e) = (d) -7 cms (MPH)
(f) = MPC = nearest centile to (e)
(g) = TCR (mid parental height +/- 8.5 cms)

I hope that this comes in useful.  I found it great fun going each week to get her weighed and seeing the pattern develop on the graph.  I am sure you will also.  And it is a great keepsake for your child when they are grown.  My mother gave us all our own books when we left home.  I like looking through mine occasionally, and it came in handy when I was at uni and being asked about vaccinations.
Peace
EF.x