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BABIES come in all shapes and sizes 鈥� or so you might imagine. According to new international growth charts, all newborns should be broadly the same size, regardless of ethnicity or their mother鈥檚 size. Nutrition and health are the only factors that make a difference.
Standardised charts already exist for a child鈥檚 growth from birth to age 5, but until now, there was no internationally agreed equivalent for fetal development.
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The pooled data from thousands of healthy, well-fed mothers from the US, UK, India, China, Brazil, Oman, Kenya and Italy. Each had regular measurements made of their fetus and newborn baby. These were then used to plot standard growth charts for fetuses in ideal conditions.
Provided the mother is healthy, 鈥渁ll babies grow in a similar way and achieve a similar size at birth鈥�, says at the University of Oxford, who led some of the research (The Lancet, , ).
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎ll babies the same鈥�