Background: Most birth weight-for-gestation charts are based on hospital populations or on birth certificates. In Flanders, the northem region of Belgium, we have aimed at obtaining standards of birth weight-for-gestation of the total population. The data were collected by the Study Center for Perinatal Epidemiology, that registers 98% of all deliveries.

Subjects: For each hospital delivery in Flanders: gynecologists, midwifes, and pediatricians register 30 items including birth weight and gestational age. We studied the records of all registered single, life-born infants with certain post-menstrual age, free of malformations and born between 1987 to 1995. Percentiles of birth weight-for-gestation were constructed from 24 to 42 weeks of gestation.

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