5 and 6 year well checks.

I was really just hoping for a quick, easy appointment.  Jeff was working so I had to take all of the kids with me at once.  It really didn't turn out quick OR easy...

Sydnee just isn't growing the way they think she should.  She hardly grew at all this year.  In fact her and Kaydee are both 34 lbs and 39 inches tall.  They are within a half a pound and a half an inch of each other.  She is at a healthy weight for her height, but she is not growing taller.  So the doctor decided she wanted to do some testing and make sure there is nothing going on.  She mentioned maybe a growth hormone restriction.  At the office they did an xray on her hand which tells them her bone age.  They also did a urine test.  And we had to go to the hospital for a bunch of labwork.

Kaydee had to have her finger poked to test for lead and she screamed bloody murder.  That made Sydnee almost faint.  So she had to lay down.  I knew taking her for blood work was going to be hard.  We finally made it out of the doctors office, and Jeff left work so I could take Sydnee to the hospital without the other kids.  I didn't tell her where we were going because I didn't want her to pass out before we even got there.  Luckily we had a really great nurse who was awesome with Sydnee.  She was great at keeping her calm, took EIGHT vials of blood very painlessly, and took care of her while she recovered.  She did have to take Sydnee out in a wheelchair because she was so woozy but once we got home she laid down for a while and then she was good.  She still doesn't like to talk about it though.

The results took over a week, because some of the bloodwork was complex, but we finally got the results.  Her bloodwork was normal, but her bone scan showed her bones to be developed like that of a 3 year old.  So we have to take her to an endocrynologist.  I wasn't sure what all of it meant at first, but from my research (we will find out if I'm wrong when she gets in to the specialist), the bone scan they do is actually looking at the carpel bones in the wrist.  We are not born with all of the bones and they develop as we get older.  But I also read that it is good to have a bone age that is less than your actual age, because it means you still have a lot of years of growing to do.  If your bone age was higher than your actual age, it means you are closer to being done growing. 

So I'm sure she will have more testing done at the endocrynologist and then we will go from there.  There is still hope that she's just a late bloomer, so we are trying not to worry.  And lets face it, she doesn't come from a family of strikingly tall people ;)