Precocious Puberty?

Ohhhh my poor little Sadie Girl.  Kay.  So within just a couple of months, she jumped from a size seven in clothes to a size 10. She grew a TON.

And then, a few weeks ago, we noticed that one of her....nipples...(sorry, I don't like using that word for some reason) was getting big.  She told me that it felt like she had a nickel underneath, and she said that it hurt.

This set off alarms in my head, because I remember, when I started developing (at age 12 or so), that feeling; as if there were quarters inserted by aliens underneath my nipples while I was sleeping.  And they really did hurt, a lot.  I remember my mom even taking me to the doctor to see what was going on.  He told me that this was part of developing.

And I was twelve years old.  It was time to develop.

With Sadie, it was just on one side, so Ben and I hoped that maybe there was just some kind of infection, or a clogged sebaceous duct, or something.  So we had her apply heat to it every now and then, and within a few days, it looked like it had gotten smaller.

However, a few days later, it was back, along with the swelling of the other...nipple.  I was alarmed.  I called our nurse advice line that our insurance had given us.  I spoke to a nurse, and she said that, with Sadie's dramatic growth spurt, coupled with what seem to be developing breasts,  it sounded like Precocious Puberty - puberty that takes place before the age of eight.

Eight??? Sadie's seven-and-a-half, but even if she was the ripe old age of eight, I still wouldn't feel okay about her going into puberty.  I have heard, anecdotally, that girls develop earlier than they used to, because of all the hormones in milk and meat (which makes me really mad at the dairy and meat industries), but I don't know.  I don't feel right about my daughter getting breasts at the age of seven.  Or even eight.

A lady in my spinning class said that her niece got her period when she was only nine.  How traumatic!!!  How awful!!

She said that Precocious Puberty not only is traumatic for a young girl, but it also triggers this thing in your body that makes it stop growing in height.  So it could stunt her growth, height-wise.  I'm not saying that I want her to be an amazon woman, but I want her body to reach the height it's meant to reach.  I don't think she'd like being 4' 3" for the rest of her life.

The nurse said that one thing you can do is have your kids get these shots - called Lupron - that make the puberty stop.  They have to get the shots once per month.  And then, at age 11 or 12 or whatever, you take the kid off the shots, and they start puberty when they're supposed to.  That sounds good to me.  But I do want to find out about potential side effects, etc.

We have a doctor appointment scheduled, but we couldn't get in until this coming Tuesday.  In the meantime, Sadie is just mortified to go to school.  She says you can see her...nipples... through her shirts, and she's really embarrassed.  So we went and got her some training bras.  They just look like sports bras.  They're a little large - the smallest size we could get was for a 27" rib cage, and Sadie's rib cage is 25", but she's relieved to have another layer between herself and her shirt.  She says some kids at school have been teasing her, but she seems to have been letting the teasing roll off her back.

You should have seen Dylan and Micah when she got her bras.  They kept gathering by her door, trying to peek in while I was showing her how to put it on.  It was fascinating to them.  Exciting.  Almost like Christmas.  I kept shooing them away and telling them to give the poor girl her privacy.

She likes to wear them at night, as well as in the day.  I told her that most girls like to take them off at night, but she wants them on all the time.  Perhaps, in a couple of months, she won't need them anymore for awhile....