Growth Hormone - how early did you start?

mandr ↓

Mon, Dec 11 2023, 9:29 pm

My 2.5 year old son has idiopathic short stature. He has always been small (born 4lbs at full term) and at first the pediatrician kept telling me to feed more and increase calories etc but as any mother of a child with ISS knows, it makes no difference! Fast forward a few months and we took him to a top endocrinologist who deals specifically with short stature issues and she ran all sorts of testing on him and had their geneticist run even more tests. BH nothing stood out with the testing and the dr is treating him as having ISS. She said she'll start him on GH treatment once he turns 2 because every year we can cash in on growth, the better it is.

So we finally got the meds and all that and I started giving him the Omnitrope. I am worried that if he CH'V has side effects, I wouldn't know about it (he's a little delayed with talking). Like how would I know if he has a headache or pain or something. The only people I know on GH are kids who are old enough to express these things. Are side effects that common?

Also, please post if your child took GH starting at a young age. It will give me chizzuk since it's such a long road ahead. Like a decade plus! Thank you!

amother

DarkMagenta

Mon, Dec 11 2023, 9:41 pm

My daughter was born at 3.5 pounds. She was very short for a while. Now at 10 she’s average. Why did you feel you need to start so early? My other child is on growth hormones for deficiency but is a preteen. I didn’t even consider it so young.

↑ mandr

Mon, Dec 11 2023, 10:07 pm

amother DarkMagenta wrote:

I don’t want to wait until he’s older and then see what’s going on. By then it’s kind of too late to get full benefit. Some kids do catch up but many don’t if they haven’t already by age 2. My son has been consistently small and never got closer to the curve. We are a tall family too except for my mother in law and she’s very short today, so this is an anomaly. If he was a girl then I might have thought differently.

amother

Stonewash ↓

Thu, Dec 19 2024, 11:27 am

amother Black wrote:

Hi op
My child is 18 months and was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency. Are you giving the hormones? I need some chizzuk too. Waiting to get MRI in a few weeks

So was mine and I waited until he was 9. I’m glad I did. He’s 11 now and bh growing nicely.

amother

↑ Black ↓

Thu, Dec 19 2024, 11:50 am

Mine used to be on 30th for height till he turned one and then fell off chart. We had many follow ups and his height is now 4 standard deviations below first so I think we r moving forward with it. ( We had growth stim test) It's significant enough of a deficiency that it warrants treatment now

amother

↑ Stonewash

Thu, Dec 19 2024, 11:53 am

amother Black wrote:

Good luck! May it be helpful! I’m guessing you tested for other things like celiac etc.

amother

Dahlia

Thu, Dec 19 2024, 12:22 pm

Following as we’ve been told to keep it on our radar for our growth restricted preemie.

As far as how to tell if he’s having side effects, I imagine it would be the same as if he had an illness. He’d be irritable, or fussy, maybe rubbing his head a lot. My baby had a respiratory infection a few weeks ago and kept slapping his head and rubbing it on things. When his sister and I caught it we both had splitting headaches, so in hindsight I’m assuming he did too.