Small baby at birth due ?dwarfism

[purplegal]

Hi all. My baby was delivered slightly early at 37 + 3 due to issues with the cord & subsequent IUGR. He was born on the 2nd percentile and dropped to below 0.4th (jaundice) where he remained for about 6 months. He then started climbing quite quickly up to 5/6th where he has stayed for a few weeks now. He's now almost 9 months and His height is still just below 0.4th but has tracked his own curve. We saw a paediatrician yesterday who thought perhaps his limbs were short and referred him for an X-ray and bloods. Of course we googled as soon as we left and were faced with lots of information about dwarfism. I am so scared. My little boy is otherwise perfectly healthy, chilled and is the happiest little thing.

I suppose I would just like to hear from other parents who had small babies who went on to be average or 'normal' height. Hopefully we will get these tests done asap and all will be well, but for now it's pretty scary 😢 x

My brother was the smallest 9-month baby the nurses had ever seen. He was so small that initially the doctors figured that he must be premature and that the length of my mother's pregnancy must've been miscalculated, but then they realised that my brother's physical development was perfectly well advanced and that if anything he appeared to be more developed than an average 9-month birth.

Throughout his school years he was noticeably small for his age; when he started at secondary school he was by far the smallest kid in the school and was still the smallest kid in the school in his second year and in his third year. But at no point was he considered to fall into the proportionate dwarf category and was always perfectly well proportioned. In his mid-teens he was admitted to the Middlesex Hospital for a few days of tests, but the tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary and the verdict was that he should merely expect to become a not-especially-tall man in due course.

He eventually grew to about 5ft 4½ in. tall - and in adulthood he's never been singled out as being freakishly short - possibly because there's no shortage of women shorter than he is. He also has a large personality, which has stood him in very good stead throughout his life.

In a nutshell, don't despair unless you have a damn good reason to, which it appears you don't. Let's hope it stays that way. All the very best. 👉🙂👈