Lom 3

• Doctors Scales
• Price Computing Scales
• Jewelry Scales
• Detecto Scales
• Health O Meter Scales
• Seca Scales
• Ohaus Scales
• Pelouze Scales
• Analytical Balances
• Moisture Analyzers

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.

As a child going to the doctor’s office was, on the one hand, scary, but on the other quite interesting. There was always the possibility of needing to get a shot, which was the scary part, but there was also lots of interesting equipment and gadgets that you didn’t see anywhere else.

One of the things that I looked forward to was an official update on my height. As a child you can’t wait to be all grown up, and being as tall as the adults was a part of that. With every visit to the doctor’s office I would step onto the medical scales and wait while he slid the various weights back and forth until everything balanced out. The doctor would read off my weight, and then slide the attached arm up from the floor scales to measure my height. Of course, I always stood as straight and tall as I possibly could, hoping to hear a number not only bigger than the last time I was there, but bigger than the measurement from the marks we made on the door jamb at home to record my growth.

Then, the doctor would slide the blood pressure cuff over my arm and pump it up until it was tight. He’d slide the stethoscope under the cuff and listen intently as the pressure was slowly eased. “Blood pressure’s normal,” he would say, and although I had no idea what that really meant, the blood pressure cuff itself was very cool.

The doctor would use the stethoscope to listen to my heart and my lungs as I sat quietly then took a few hugely exaggerated breaths. The stethoscope was one of the most intriguing items in the doctor’s office. Not only could you use it to hear a human heart beat, but this was the main tool of the mysterious safecracker. With it, an master criminal could open any combination lock by somehow listening for the clicks and tiny noises of the tumblers.

It seemed at the time as though every visit entailed yet another vaccination. Whether it was tetanus, measles, mumps, or some other dread malady, a big needle was the universal preventative measure. On the one hand, I was curious enough to want to look, but somehow it seemed to hurt less if I didn’t. Either way, my arm would be sore for a couple of days afterward. Of course, getting a shot at the doctor’s also meant getting a lollipop. They always said that you would get a lollipop if you didn’t cry when you they gave you the shot, but I don’t think I ever saw a kid who didn’t get a lollipop afterwards, whether he cried or not.

Of course, the most magical piece of equipment was the X-ray machine. This device could take pictures of the skeleton that was inside us all. Often there would be X-ray photos on the doctor’s office walls and as I waited for the doctor, I’d scan them carefully looking to see if I could spot a broken bone.

Everything from the medical scales to the lollipops to the X-rays made a trip to the doctor’s a wondrous event for a young preschool child. Now, as I head into middle age, it seems that there isn’t so much a sense of wonder, though the trepidation still remains.