SHE weighs just 22lbs and wears clothes the same size as a nine-month-old baby.
But four-year-old Amelie Gledhill is as bright and bubbly as any other schoolgirl her age.
The tiny Elland youngster is being dubbed The Real Thumbelina in an ITV1 documentary being shown later this month.
Amelie suffers from a rare form of dwarfism called Russell-Silver Syndrome, making it difficult for her to gain weight.
She has to be tube-fed through her stomach for 21 hours a day and her bones are so thin that she has severe hip problems and a curved spine.
Amelie – a pupil at Old Earth primary school – has already undergone four agonising operations to straighten her hips, by fitting plates and pins to her thighs.
Each round of surgery has left her having to endure two months in a plaster cast stretching from her chest to her toes to allow her bones to heal.
She has also had more surgery this year to fit a jejunostomy tube to feed her directly into her stomach.
The programme – being broadcast on December 12 at 9pm – follows the four-year-old as she is about to start school.
The youngster – who has two older sisters – has to have her school uniform specially made to fit her tiny frame.
Her parents, Anne and Jon, are deeply worried about what the future holds for Amelie.
Anne, of Fern Rise, said: “It is hard. I do worry about her being bullied. How would she drive a car when she’s older? Will she meet somebody that she’s happy with, a partner in life?
“Nobody’s ever said how tall we can expect her to get to. Nobody’s ever been able to give us that insight into the future.”
Amelie was born at 37 weeks weighing 5lbs 9oz.
Her parents were initially told she was fine.
“She looked a bit different because her head appeared so much bigger but actually her head is the normal size but she was just so tiny,’’ Anne explained.
“But then everybody kept saying, ‘she’ll be fine. She’s small, she’ll catch up’. And we did have to go through that a lot before people actually realised, no, actually she’s not going to catch up and this is how she is.
“Essentially she’s like a baby, she’s still in her nappies, we still brush her teeth for her, we wash her, we dress her. She tries to do it by herself but she just can’t.”
The documentary follows the family as they visit Chicago to meet Dr Madeline Harbison, a world-leading specialist in Amelie’s condition.
The trip gives the family fresh hope that growth hormones could change Amelie’s future and are now waiting to see spinal specialists at Manchester Children’s Hospital to decide the next stage.
Anne added: “We just want some good to come out of doing the documentary and hope it reaches out to people affected by this who feel they don’t know where to turn. That’s how we felt.”
