At Home Baby Scale

Weighing In to Relieve Anxiety

• What: Baby Scale
• When: Birth to 3 years?
• Why: Accurate measurements and peace of mind
• Where: Amazon

With my first foray into breastfeeding, I learned to my horror that you can’t tell how much your baby eats. Your best guess comes from how many wet and poopy diapers they have (infants can go through six to eight diapers a day at first), but counting diapers didn’t reassure me. If you also fret in between infrequent checkups, you seek out the closest and most convenient baby scales near you.

I took my infant to a mother’s group that had a scale in the meeting space. Another store also provided a scale for mothers to use to check their babies’ weight. Our pediatricians also welcomed parents to drop in and weigh their infants, but I hated hanging out in the doctor’s office with sick children and exposing my infant. I also feared getting a reputation as that kind of mom, and had no idea what frequency of weighing in constituted reasonable doubt and what went over the line into obsessive behavior.

Unfortunately, shops close and pediatricians move to offices half an hour further away. If I had known I could order a scale of my very own for less than I probably spent on gas driving to various places to weigh my son, I would’ve invested years ago.

This scale features a handy hold button, which averages the last few measurements of a wiggling baby. My child only moved more the longer I left him on a scale, making getting an accurate reading that much more difficult. The manufacturer recommends using it only on a hard surface, which seems counter intuitive should your wiggly baby slip off, but it provides better measurements that way. You can zero out something soft and not quite so cold, like a blanket, before adding your child.

And in case you also hate stripping your child (making them angry not to mention the risk of getting pee or poop on things), you can weigh them fully clothed before and after a breastfeeding session and get a good idea of how many ounces they consumed. Just be sure not to change any diapers or other clothing between measurements.

The scale arrives in only a couple days, so you can cut the worrying about supply sooner rather than later, and since it converts to a step on type scale, you can use it well past your breastfeeding days as it can handle toddlers up to 60 lbs once you remove the baby tray.