nervous about fetal measurements at gender ultrasound- need advise desperately

[tutus&tiaras]

HI All,

So the good news is that I had a gender ultrasound yesterday at 14 wks, 2 days at one of the 3d places. The good news was that they determined it was a girl.... yeah!!! The tech didn't say that she saw anything that concerned her, but when I got home I started researching the fetal measurements that were listed on the sheet she gave me, and now I am worried that things don't look right.... Particularly the small femur length, and the relationship between that and the head. Heard this can point to down syndrome. In a nutshell it appears that I have a baby with a big head, and belly, and short legs. I have attached the report. Can anyone give me any advise or make sense of it? If there was something wrong, do those independent 3D places tell you?

PS: WE had our nuchal about 2 weeks ago and they said everything looked great. Does anyone know if they measure the femur /head/and abdomen at that point?

Thanks for reading my post

[atomic sagebrush]

Congratulations!!! Great news!

If the techs at either appointment had any concerns, they would have mentioned it. It's hard for we as laymen to always interpret the info on the report accurately because there are many variables at play that we are not aware of.

Down Syndrome has a number of markers that are much more reliable than femur length and with DS, there are virtually always several "soft" markers in place that give the techs call for alarm.

I think you just have a shortee on your hands there! Extra small tutu needs to be on order!

[nuthinbutpink]

I'm sure she is just little. The head is always the biggest part! She's still in the 23 percentile for that. My DD isn't even on the chart.

They would have seen others markers and yes, the femur length should have been checked. Congratulations!

[littlemissnaughty7]

i dont think you have anything to worry about huni, tey and relax and enjoy the fact that your sway worked and your having a beautiful little girl, she may not even be small either, when you go to your next scan her femur length may have caught up, congratulations on your daughter !

[Foxy]

I'm sure if the tech had any concerns regarding the baby's health she would have mentioned it. As far as I can see everything looks fine. Congratulations on your baby girl!

[TTC5]

Congrats on your girl
I don't think you have anything to worry about x

[Cinss]

My friend had a teeny tiny baby girl, she was teeny tiny all the way through her pregnancy. When she was born she was 4.5pound, and perfectly healthy and normal, just small. The father was not a big man so it was just genes that made her baby so small.

[Coldwater]

First of all, your nuchal translucency results and the presence or absence of the nasal bone are much better predictors of something like Down Syndrome than one isolated set of measurements. I'm assuming everything was OK at your nuchal scan? If so, I wouldn't read too much into the OOR measurements.

Second, the tech may not have been quite as precise with the measurements since this was an elective scan. A few millimeters either way can make a significant difference with such a tiny baby. It's possible that these measurements were in range at your nuchal scan, or were OOR but not alarming. If you haven't heard any news from your doctor's office, odds are good that they're not worried. The only other possibility that I'm aware of for similar measurements is a milder form of dwarfism, but again, your baby's individual measurements aren't <3rd or >97th percentile. It sounds more likely that she just has a bigger head and shorter femurs.

Now to add my personal experience: My youngest (now almost 3) had OOR results just like this a couple of times. His head circumference and BPD were crazy high, sometimes off the charts, while his femur length was in the 30s or 40s. Nobody ever said anything to me about it; it was considered a non-finding, probably because everything else looked fine. Sure enough, he's got a gigantic cranium, and most of his length is in his torso. He's not even short - he's always been between the 75th-90th percentile for height. It's just the way he's built. By all appearances and developmental measures he's completely normal, even advanced in many areas.

Congrats on your girl! It's always a good idea to check with your doctor and get the information straight from the horses' mouth, but I just wanted you to know that there are plenty of reasons why those measurements could be off that have nothing to do with your baby's health.