Growth - when do Drs get concerned?

I have a 13 1/2 month old DD who is very little - only 7kgs and 68cms.

We see a paed who is closely monitoring her weight which is increasing, very slowly. She has only grown 0.5cm in the past 5 months.

There has always been a lot of concern for her weight, but they never seem bothered by her height.   When I mentioned it to her paed at our last appointment she said that it is difficult to measure them at this age so that don't tend to get concerned about height. We have had this line from our GP before as well - it feels like a bit of a fob off though. As even if you build in a reasonable margin of error - say 3cms she would still be off the plunket charts.

I am 170cms tall and DH is 180+cms tall - so we wouldn't expect to have a short baby.

Can anyone share any experiences as to when they start taking it seriously?

Thanks M2M

(looks like we have replied to each others threads!)

This isn't even the public system (we have had absolutely no luck there!). We see a Paed privately (in Akld) who is normally excellent. At the moment the paed seems so focused on her other problems (reflux, allergies, intolerances, leaky gut weight etc) that I think her lack of stature has got a bit lost along the way (or maybe just explained away as a symptom of her other problems).

I will bring it up again at our next appointment, but maybe she is too young for them to get overly concerned yet...

Mum_me, yeah I'd be a little concerned with you DD's height compared to what you guys were at the same age, IF she was a normal child.

My boy was short! We put him onto losec & he had a height spurt plus his hair started to grow. His weigh plateued after this cause he was going backwards, everything that was going in seemed to be going straight out again.

You might find that when you get her better in terms of what else is going on with her she'll grow, at the moment she'll be not getting the extra nutrients to put into height.

Mum-Me - we have a similar issue but mainly on the weight. DD is nearly 13 months and just 8kg, but recently had a 5cm growth spurt to make it to 76cm. She also has a dairy allergy and asthma.

However, when she was 4months old she had put on about 50g in 2 months and not grown anything in length. So we were sent to CHCH hospital for a couple of weeks where they did exactly that, bone scans, genetic testing, blood tests, bronchoscopies, sweat tests etc. She was started on duocal and neocate where they expected huge growth improvements. Whilst we didn't get huge improvements, we certainly increased compared to what we had before.

 

With your DD's intoerlances an allergies, and reflus etc, maybe they are just waiting until these are under control to see if once she is getting the correct nutrients she will grow?? Have you asked directly for genetic testing, bone scans etc??

 

Sorry I am not much help!

I haven't read all the replies, but my oldest was born on the 3rd percentile and pretty much stayed there until around 18 months when he then fell off the chart, his paed (we see one cos of allergies) was concerned cos Dh and me aren't short and also concerned that he stopped tracking the line, his weight carried on increasing. He was tested for gluten intolerance, iron levels, growth hormone and thyroid (I thnk that was all of them) some were border line and he is just about to be retested for them, he's just turned 3. Between these tests we have been to plunket every 3 months to have him weighed and measured. He is still not quite on the chart but he is growing, they are now kind of uhmming and arring over whether it needs further investigating if his tests come back ok, obviously if they don't come back ok then we will be doing something.

It couldn't hurt to ask for some tests, just they will be blood tests and that isn't pleasant for a little one. Not that's it's that bad but still nicer to avoid if not totally neccessary which might be why they haven't wanted to do any tests at the moment.

I was looking at mine and DH's baby books and both of us were 70cm at 12 months so quite similar to your DD. I think my book just had 'petite' the whole way through and I'm short now, but just a bit under average really (about 158cm) not crazy short. DH's mum worried a lot when he was little and took him to paeds and looked into growth hormones etc... but in the end decided against it. He's now about 167cm so short for a guy but he's got 2 or 3 shorter friends.

So yeah, we both ended up short, but some how ended up with a big baby - Cooper was measuring about 68cm at 5 months (or was it 69cm) so no idea how we ended up with a big baby!! So even though you guys are tall, maybe there's some genes in there somewhere for a petite child. Maybe ask the paed at what point do they worry? Is it an age or a height?