Short femur at 20 week scan

[Hantsmum10]

Hello i'm new here but just needed some support. I'm 20 weeks pregnant today and had my scan yesterday. It showed that the babies femur was 28mm just on the 5th centile. The sonographer said that if it was a mm more they would not be concerned, and there were no other issues.

My other measurement were
HC 161.7
AC 138.7

They also showed it to a MW and she was not overly concerned but they have referred me to a consultant and i have an appt next week.

Should i be worried??

Has anyone else had any experience of this?

They said my date maybe wrong and i am actually not yet 20weeks.

The problem is i have googled it and frightened myself!!

Your baby may just have short legs! Mine all do - their legs regularly measure 3 weeks behind other body parts at that stage. And sure enough most sleepsuits and trousers drag in the dirt. I need short trousers for myself too!

I've heard it said that these days, most up to date doctors consider that soft markers only really count as soft markers when considering genetic issues in the presence of a hard marker elsewhere. A hard marker being something like a heart condition. So in isolation it should not be anything to worry about.

Thanks for your reply, it was just a shock and then i started to think the worst.

My DS has short legs and and longer body like my OH, so i am hoping that the baby is just small at this stage.

Did you keep getting re scanned to monitor your babies progress?

I had this too but was told my to worry. As I'm quite short and we don't have tall genes on either side and I have short thighs and legs myself in comparison to my body I think the poor baby may inherits dumpy thighs.

I was scanned again but it was nothing to do with the short femurs - there were other reasons (low PAPP-A at my NT screening which can mean placenta problems later on) All of my DC have typical chromosomes, well, as far as I can tell! Just short legs!

Nothing to worry about! Dd1 and DS had femur lengths off the chart, and both have long legs like me. This baby has a femur length slightly higher than average. All my babies have had smaller than average heads, with DS having the smallest that really worried me until the end. He's absolutely fine and has nice big ears and thick hair to even out his small head now :).

Fakebook - Mine are the complete opposite and all have massive heads at the top end of the percentiles!! I've been called back for growth scans as a result in fact!