When proud new parents spread the news of the highly anticipated arrival of their little bundle of joy, what are the first things they tell you? Usually you will learn the sex of the baby and the name (if that information has not already been shared with everyone) followed immediately by the baby’s weight and length. As a new parent, when you send out the birth announcements, you proudly list all of your baby’s stats, select a choice photograph, and mail them off to everyone you know. The birth announcement is the baseball card of infancy.

The obsession with baby weight does not end when you leave the hospital with your precious new baby. Besides looking adorable, a baby’s main job for the first few months of life is to eat and gain weight. Parents eagerly look forward to every doctor visit so they can see first hand how much weight their little one has packed on since the last visit, which is a primary indication that we, as parents, are doing our job well.

It goes without saying that our youngest members of society cannot hop on the bathroom or doctor’s scale to check their weight, special baby and toddler scales are used weigh our young ones. Since babies rarely lay still (especially when laying naked on a hard cold surface) baby scales are specially designed to be highly accurate even when the pressure on the scale fluctuates as the baby wiggles and fusses. It seems that our aversion to scales starts very early in life.

Another important reason we weigh our babies is to accurately measure breast milk consumption. Many nursing mothers worry about their milk supply, and question weather or not their little ones are getting enough to eat. Since babies are more efficient at nursing than breast pumps are at pumping milk, the only true way to measure how much breast milk a baby is consuming while nursing is to weigh the baby both before and after a feeding. If the infant weighs 12 pounds 3 ounces before nursing and 12 pounds 6 ounces after nursing, the mother knows that their child gobbled up 3 ounces of breast milk during that particular feeding.

The practice of weighing babies before and after nursing is so common that lactation consultants routinely have concerned mothers come into their office or hospital to nurse their child so they can get either the peace of mind that their child is getting his or her fill or problems can be addressed and solutions and alternative feeding methods can be explored.

Both weighing and measuring how long babies are at each doctor’s visit helps parents know that their child is on track with their physical development. Baby’s weight, length, and head circumference are charted and compared to the baby’s previous checkup as well as to the national average for children of the same age and sex. Knowing how their child ranks on the charts compared to the national average helps many parents know where their child stands and if they are on track developmentally, which gives many parents peace of mind.

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Anyone who goes to the doctor’s office for annual check-up is used to seeing the doctor’s medical scales. These floor scales use balance scales with sliding weights. I guess because it can be more easily calibrated for accuracy than a digital scale. Whatever the reason, medical scales are a universal fixture at the doctor’s office, and it is usually the first diagnostic device that is used on the patient during any visit.

These medical scales have a sliding arm that also measures the patient’s height. It’s great for the kids to come in to the doctor’s office and see how much they grown, but after age 30, the only thing that little arm can say is whether we’ve started shrinking yet. Good news is no change. It’s really the dividing line between middle age and old age. If you find you’re actually getting shorter with every annual visit to the doctor’s office, it’s pretty hard to continue claiming to be only middle aged.

From there, it can only get worse. Weight and height, fine. Next they take you into the examination room and break out more medical equipment. First, the blood pressure cuff is tightened around your arm. Back in the day, they all had a little rubber bulb attached and the nurse would pump it up by hand, but now they are almost all automatic. A little electric air pump inflates the cuff, and then the pressure is slowly released until your diastolic and systolic numbers are revealed.

The nurse will also jot down your pulse, though the doctor will make an allowance in that number at least for your trepidation at the anticipation of the touch of cold metal to be placed over your heart, and then against the skin of your back as the doctor listens first to your heart and if that’s still ticking along then to your lungs with a stethoscope freshly removed from some hidden ice bucket.

Then come the needles for blood drawn from your veins to be sent to the lab, for the latest flu shot, and if you have any pending out of country travel, then needles for a whole host of innoculations. The needles, however, are the least of your worries if you are a man over the age of forty and you are due for your annual prostate exam.

The final insult, of course, and worse than all the rest, is the bill. If only they would put you back on the precision medical scales after they have extracted payment, they would find you lighter in the wallet if nowhere else.

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