Hi Robin,

I am a 23 year-old female with SWCAH.  I also have two sisters with SWCAH.  We range in height from 5’7" to 5’10", and our parents are not extraordinarily tall (father 6’0" and mother 5’6"). 

We were all small as kids, but reached normal height in junior high.  We would periodically hit very strange growth spurts (tests indicated that we were not over or undersupressed during the spurts), and continued to grow until the end of high school.  I feel like I may have even grown a 1/2 inch or so in college. 

Our endo says that we may have lost an inch or two due to the CAH, but it’s impossible to tell since we are all tall females. 

My parents were extremely frightened that we would be below average in height and it is great that you are on top of it if your child appears to be small at this stage in life.  It is always good to be cautious and to get as many opinions as possible, but do not get discouraged by predictions of your child’s future height (my parents were told when we were kids by several well-regarded endos that all of the kids would be below 5’3".  I am at least 7 inches taller than the predicted height.

Pay close attention next time that you are in a very large crowd (grocery store, mall, etc) and then think about the height of several men that you know.    People vary greatly in heights and it’s not something that crosses your mind on a regular basis, largely, because we see such variance constantly.  This same exercise can be performed in a large classroom.  When your child starts school, and if he hasn’t grown to average height at that time, there will be plenty of other kids in the same boat.  There are always other kids in that same quadrant of the normal growth chart.              

Though it is difficult to do, I think that maintaining a healthy and consistent weight made us easier for our endo to manage.  Maintaining the consistent weight is certainly easier said than done, but I take the same dose of steroid that I took when I was a freshmen in high school and am doing very well with it.  I think that the combination of being shorter and heavier at a young age makes kids a double target.  Again, staying at a normal weight is easier said than done and it is still a struggle, but it helped me to fit in even when I was shorter than most kids.   

Best,

Alison