Femur measurement

jennifire7

Hi! I have been lurking on this board since we found out at 7 weeks that we were expecting twins (fraternal boys).  At my last MFM appointment yesterday they said that baby A's femur bone was measuring 4mm too short. He didn't seem to be all that concerned and said that they would remeasure in 4 weeks at 28 week growth scan.  Baby A weight was 1 lb 2 oz and baby B weight was 1 lb 7 oz.  Has anyone else had experience with this? Did the femur end up measuring proportionately at the next scan? 

Thanks! 

Ruthie04

Both of our babies had short femurs and small abdominal circumferences. All of those measurements were in the first and second percentiles. The head measurements were normal, but they were dx with IUGR at 34w. However, femur lengths were short from the first growth scan. Our boys were tiny, but they are filling out very fast now!

erhansen

Our Baby B had a short femur and large head...the combination is apparently a soft marker for Down's. My husband and I agonized over this for a long time. We wanted to know, but on the other hand it wasn't going to change any sort of outcome for us. At any rate, my hubby did a lot of reading (not on Dr. Google, stay away from Dr. Google), he actually read medical journal articles and studies (he has access to that stuff through his job); even though we concluded that we were worried for no reason, it still caused us a lot of undue stress. Baby B was born last night and he's beautiful...short, but beautiful. And guess what, his brother has short legs too! Please don't agonize over this the way we did, it really robbed us of enjoying some of the better aspects of pregnancy.

jennifire7

Thank you and congratulations on your boys!  My sister works for Johnson and Johnson so she did some research for us also.  Of all the soft markers a smaller femur measurement is the least likely to result in Down's. 

Congratulations again on your healthy baby boys!