For about two weeks now, my daughter, who is not quite two years old, has been complaining that her knee hurts. She would say, "tummy hurt" while holding her knee several times throughout the day. She still walks on it, and doesn't favor it. She didn't injure it. It isn't red or hot. She hasn't had any other symptoms. She doesn't cry or seem upset by it. It's more just a nuisance. I took her to see the nurse practitioner on Monday, and she didn't find anything to cause the pain. Her advice was just to wait it out and see if she continues to complain about it. If, in another couple weeks, she is still complaining, then they will do X-rays.
My question is, has anyone had a similar situation with their child? What caused the pain? Everything I've found on the internet seems to have different symptoms (injury, infection, growing pains) than what she is experiencing. Being a mom without answers, I can't help but think the worst. :)
My husband and I decided we wanted peace of mind, so we had the X-rays and some bloodwork done. Both came back normal. This rules out a fracture of any kind, leukemia or juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. At least now we can sleep! We are again in the "wait and see" mode. If she continues to complain we will take her to an Orthopedist. I also found out my sister went through the same thing with her son when he was 2. It wasn't anything to worry about, either. Thanks for the responses!
Myself and my 2 boys go through pains in our knees and legs at times throughout growing up. My doctor suggested to watch the calcium and protein intake, is the child getting enough? When I looked at it, they really were not getting as much as they should. Since then, they don't have the pains. It was a process of grwoing pains.
I hope that it is as simple as that for you!
Could be a lot of things, but this is something that happened to us, weirdest thing ever, it's called "sineulstesthia" or something like that.
My son woke up crying one morning screaming that his leg hurt (several months ago). It was 5am and I thought he had gotten out of bed to pee and maybe stepped on a toy. So I layed him down with me and he calmed down, we went to sleep. About 2 hours later he wakes up and is in extreme pain, limping, telling me how bad it hurts, in tears. I try to take him out to the living room and at this point he can't even sit up, says his back hurts, can't walk, I'm trying to wiggle his legs, check his range of motion, and it obviously hurts him. No marks, no bruises, no redness or swelling, I'm baffled. So I give a dose of Ibuprofen and wait for the doctor's office to open. He becomes increasingly less upset and starts to get comfy as the pain killers kick in.
Go to the doctor and by then of course he is fine, but after seeing him like that I just wanted the doctor to check him over and make sure he was okay. The cause we find out, is because this sinul-whatever it's called is a viral infection that attacks the joints and causes anywhere from mild to extreme pain from the inflammation it inflicts on the joints. It usually goes away as quickly as it comes on, and oftentimes presents with no prior symptoms of infection (fever, fatigue, etc). A dose of ibuprofen, the doc says, and he'll be surprised if it happens again, but if it should to give him a call.
Well it did happen one more time, about a week later, not quite as severe, and the doctor asked blood to be drawn just to ensure there were no auto immune issues presenting, and said they might have to take some x-rays to make sure no signs of juvenile arthritis were presenting either(and he is 5 yrs old and the doc says yep, that can happen). But another dose of ibuprofen and not another issue since. Viruses take time to work out of the body, typically 21 days to run their course, so the viral inflammation that caused the pain died off and now he is fine...
It was crazy, and I felt great knowing my kids doctor knew what in the world was going on. He said a lot of parents freak out and take the kids to the hospital thinking they broke a bone or something, just to get a dose of ibuprofen and sent home. Thank goodness for such a sharp doctor that knew the answer to his illness, because I was getting freaked out. But give her a dose of ibuprofen maybe and see if it continues.
She could have pulled a muscle too, fell and bumped her knee, (ever get one of those bruises thats like invisible but you hit that part of your body on something and all you know is its sore?)maybe even chipped a bone or something. No matter what, I'm pretty sure it will pass.
My daughter does the same thing. For her it is growing pains. I thought there was something wrong with her till I told my aunt about it. She told me that when her husband was little he would have horrible sharps pains in his knees when he was going through a growth spurt. Now their son has them, but so far not as painful. My daughter eats non stop when she is going through a spurt. That's my indicator not to worry if she complains about her legs, knees, or feet hurting. Good luck.
Are you sure she didn't fall down? Most toddlers do that on a regular basis and most of the time we don't even know about it. There's something called a "Toddler's Fracture" that I just found out (the hard way!) a couple months ago. Toddlers can get a fracture in their leg but it runs vertically down the bone or spirals around it. Most of the time, they don't even show up on the x-ray until a few days after the injury occurs. My daughter (who had just turned 2) ended up with this type of fracture. All she did was fall down while running. She tripped over her feet, fell down and skinned a knee. It didn't look any worse/harder than any other fall she had taken this summer. But these fractures usually occur from these 'gentle' innocent looking falls. We found out about it because she refused to walk on it for 10 hours. The ER put a temporary cast on it and sent us to a peds orthopedic guy. He says they are very common and 75% of the time the parents never know because the kids don't really complain that much and they just heal on their own. My daughter was in a walking cast for 2 weeks and never really complained once the cast was one to help support it.
Now, everytime she hurts something, she says "I can't walk" and insists on being carried for awhile. Bump the head? "I can't walk". Hit her elbow on something? "I can't walk". It's annoying but fading. :-)
Hi!! I can imagine how worried you must be.
Something similar happened to us. One day my son was complaining about his leg hurting. It was so bad he could barely walk (this from a little boy that would not stop running around). We knew he didn't have any injuries, but we started doubting that. Eventually we took him to an Urgent care center (the pediatrician's office was already closed.) They basically tied him up to hold him in place for an X-ray. He was terrified of that thing. They found there was absolutly nothing wrong with his leg. Within the next couple of days he was all better. They said it must have been growing pains.
Does it hurt when you touch it? If not, try a massage.
I do think you should have an X-ray done just to be on the safe side.
I hope she feels better soon!!
I'm not wanting to scare you or anything, because there's such a huge amount of things that you could run through your mind about things it "could" be. One thing I'd like you to think about though is that if it doesn't go away, just to be on the safe side, request some bloodwork. I say this because I have a friend who has a son that complained about his legs hurting. He also would complain of a simple fall, like going down a slide that was only about 3 inches from the ground, and landing on his butt. He told her it hurt, when all the other kids were doing the same thing and found it to be hysterical that they landed lightly on their bottoms. She took him into a doctor and they didn't find anything in an xray. So, the doctor recommended she wait for a few days to see if it got better. When it didn't, the doctor ordered some blood work. Come to find out, her son had ALL, a form of leukemia. Now, remember, I started out saying that I didn't want to scare you. It's quite unlikely that it's what you're dealing with. I'm just saying that you should make sure you're persistent with finding out what's causing it if it doesn't go away. Had my friend not gone along with the bloodwork, which by the way she almost cancelled because she felt it was unnecessary, who knows what would've happened to her wonderful son (who's now in remission and enduring the maintenance phase of his treatment). It's always "better safe than sorry" with our little ones.
It could be growing pains. My daughter, who's now 6, every so often complains about her legs hurting. It usually happens when she's sleeping, and after I give her ibuprofen, she's okay. It sometimes happens close together, sometimes she doesn't have pain for months in between. I believe that one of the body's main growing points is in the knee. My husband and his sister both remember having growing pains in their knees when they were little. Hope you figure it out!
