We have a total of 5 children in our home, 3 boys born to us, ages 14, almost 12, and almost 10, as well as two lovely adopted children, ages 8 and 6. The 8 year old is the only girl in the whole mess.The third boy has always been our oddity. According to my calendar, he was born about 3 1/2 weeks late, but the doctor was certain that based on his size, he was right on time. At birth, he weighed 6lbs, 14 ozs. and was 18 inches long. He was the shortest and lightest of the three boys, and his umbilical cord was very narrow and the placenta was calcified.At birth, he was somewhere around the 25th percentile for height and weight. Shortly after that, he fell below the 3rd percentile. I kept bringing my concerns up to our pediatrician, but I was repeatedly told that he was doing just fine and that all kids grow at their own rate.He never really ate a whole lot, even when nursing and bottle fed, averaging out at about 12 ozs of milk a day. He was also late to talk, walk, and sleeping was a whole other nightmare.At 10 mos he had a penile torsion repair.At 18 mos, he had his first set of ear tubes placed.At 3 years he had a hydrocele repaired as well as a procedure done to lengthen the opening at the head of his penis since it was too short.At 3 1/2 years old, he had a sleep study done at significant insistence from me since he was still not sleeping well. Nothing was found.At 4 we had a second set of ear tubes placedAt 4 we finally saw a developmental pediatrician/endocrinologist who told me that my son was perfectly fine, but was sneaking calories when I wasn't paying attention. (This boy was glued to my side constantly. I knew what he was up to every second of the day, no chance he was sneaking food.) She did order some testing all of which came back normal.At 4 1/2 he had his tonsils removed unexpectedly, due to large abscesses on his tonsils.After having his tonsils removed, he finally moved from below the 3rd percentile to between 3 and 5 percent. In contrast, our older boys have always been between 50-75th percentile for height.His sleep finally improved to where he can sleep from 10-6ish on a regular basis.At 6 he had a third set of ear tubes placed as well as his adenoids removed.At 9, his growth was still significantly below the rest of the family and his peers. He will stay in the same shoes for a year or until they wear out. He weighs about 65 lbs, but has never really had a growth spurt that brought significant height change.Somewhere along the line, we switched doctors' offices and last October, we switched doctors within the new practice. At his first visit with the new doctor, I mentioned his growth was an issue in my mind. She ordered a bone age scan and referred us to a different pediatric endocrinologist.The first bone scan came back with his bone age being just about a year older than his chronological age.When we saw the endocrinologist for the first visit, he felt that the scan might have been incorrectly read and decided to repeat it. The second scan came back with his bone age being 11 yrs, 6 months, while his chronological age was 9 yrs 3 months.In addition to the bone scan, he was tested for thyroid functions, chemistry screen, celiac, and growth hormone screening. Everything came back normal.Following that, we did a growth hormone stimulation test which also came back normal.We had a follow up visit 6 months after our initial visit. At this visit, the endo tested for diabetes insipidus as well as an additional bone age scan. The diabetes insipidus test came back normal.The bone age has progressed to 12 yrs and 6 months while the chronological age has only progressed to 9 yrs and 9 months. At the rate he is progressing, his adult height will only be about 5ft if we are lucky.Our endo has kind of thrown his hands up in the air and said, let's wait and see, maybe we can delay puberty and give him more time to grow.He did order an MRI for us to check if there was an issue with his pituitary. The MRI results show that his pituitary is fine, but they did find both heterotopia and arteriovenous malformation (AVM) present in his brain.At this point we are seeing a neurosurgeon because they think this AVM has the potential to rupture and cause a traumatic event in his life as he gets older. (This is our blessing in disguise. If we had not had this MRI, my son might have had an event that could have changed or even ended his life much too soon, only found because we think he is not growing the way he should.)Has anyone else out there found there child to not be growing well with no apparent cause? If his bone age was younger than his chronological age, I wouldn't be so concerned, but life is just so much harder on men that are not very tall. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2temsfC
No comments:
Post a Comment