Saturday, January 29, 2011

Liliana's Height

Liliana's long awaited height check appointment was on Friday. She was very excited, but mostly because she was going to tell the doctor about the "baby in her belly" and have her "get it out." Yes, we have some issues with reality around here. Anyways, we were hoping for more than a half inch of growth, but she only grew 1/4 of an inch.

Which throws us into step two of this process, the first part of which was blood work to rule out some genetic problems (which Kaylon got to do today!) and then make an appointment with the specialist. I read that there's another test that needs to be done which entails an IV and blood draws every 30 minutes which, I'm sure, Liliana will just love. Most likely she will need to have weekly growth hormone injections to stimulate her growth. Not so sure how we're going to do that with a girl that hates needles, but I guess we'll figure it out.

I feel the need to explain that this is not a cosmetic or arbitrary choice we're making. Liliana is not just short. It's not because she is low on the growth charts- my girls fell off the weight charts for the first 3 years of their lives and I didn't bat an eye. Liliana is not creating or releasing the growth hormones needed to grow. An x-ray showed that she has the bones of a 2.5 year old. She was always near the 50% for height... until this year when she dropped to the 5%. She'll continue to drop if we don't do anything. If your child can't see, you get them glasses. My child can't grow, so I'm going to get her shots of hormones that hopefully after time she'll forget and be grateful for. Maybe when she can finally ride the roller coasters she loves so much she'll understand...

So we'll keep you posted. And hopefully you won't be able to hear her screams the next time a needle comes near...

1 comment:

tami said...

good for you for being so proactive! Josh has two nieces that had this issue (or at least a similar one) and only one had the shots. I think their parents didn't realize until too late with their first daughter that there were problems. So now the older daughter is less than 5 feet tall and the younger one is a more average 5'4 or so.

Poor Liliana, though :( Who likes shots? It's like Lissie with her eye patch; you tell them "hey, I know you hate it, but I promise you will thank me one day!"