A Brand New Perspective

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Eli needed glasses. We had started noticing that his right eye seemed to cross at times. It didn't happen all the time at first, but it didn't seem to be correcting itself either, so we decided to take him to a pediatric ophthalmologist. 

When she first examined him, she said that it was definitely noticeable. His eye wasn't turning all the time, but it was turning a majority of the time. She said it could either be a muscle issue {which would require surgery when he was 2 or 3 years old}, or he could have a really high prescription, which would require glasses. They dilated his little eyes, held up varying lenses to his eyes, shined lights in his eyes...basically performed a number of tests to determine what the issue was. And my little guy did SO well! He wasn't fussy or squirmy, and he was super patient with her examination. At the end of it, we had the verdict: he would need glasses.

It turns out he has high hyperopia {aka far-sightedness}. Basically, his eyeballs are shorter than they should be, so when he is looking at an object far away, the image comes into focus behind the retina. There's even a possibility that he has had difficulty seeing both distance and near. But either way, his cross eye has resulted because he has been trying to compensate for what he could not see. Poor little buddy! Other than his crossed eye, he really hasn't seemed to have any other issues. Many children with hyperopia avoid books and hate reading...but Eli LOVES sitting and flipping through books. He seems to run around and play with no problem, able to make baskets in his little basketball goal and stack blocks without any problem. So his vision issues are not seeming to slow him down in any way. Of course, hyperopia can cause increased muscle strain/fatigue and headaches, so he could have been experiencing some of those symptoms without us knowing. 

The hope is that wearing glasses full time will help correct his cross eye. There is still a chance he could need surgery later, but we will have to see how the glasses do. There is also a chance that as his eye grows and develops, his vision could get better. But we won't know that until he is 9 or 10, so he'll just always know glasses {and in the future, contacts, if he wants}. 

When he first put them on, it took him a second to realize he could actually SEE, and he immediately started looking around at everything. He was taking it all in, and couldn't stop smiling. When he saw himself in the mirror, he drew in an excited breathe, like he was surprised to see such a handsome fellow! :)

So now we figure out life with glasses! Our biggest challenge right now is making sure he keeps them on...and that his sister leaves them alone :)  I started wearing my glasses a little bit more before we got Eli's pair, in an effort to get them both used to them, practicing with them to leave them alone. We're still working on that, though he is doing better than I expected. And we'll figure it out!