Spectacles...another word for glasses. I am proud to say that Hunter's Daddy and I decided that Hunter should see a pediatric opthamologist, mainly because of Mommy's horrible vision problems and coke bottle glasses at the age of 5. (They made glasses a lot bigger and thicker back in those days.) Hunter also was showing some potential signs that he wasn't seeing perfectly, although really, you would never guess his eyes were the problem. We thought his clumsiness and multiple falls might be due to balance problems from his ears - the doctor even said that before he looked at Hunter's eyes on Monday: that falls are usually due to balance issues not vision issues.
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He ate his words shortly after that. For those wondering how a doctor checks an 18-month-old's eyes, they dilate the pupils and then shine a light into the eye at different angles to see how it reflects on the retina. This will show the doctor whether the child's eye shape is normal or abnormal (called astigmatism). Hunter has similar amounts of astigmatism in both eyes, indicating he is nearsighted. For those of you who know the numbers, he's a -6.5 in each eye. In comparison, I believe before I had my surgery, I was a -11 in one eye (much more severe) and -6 in the other.
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Anyway, my boy needs glasses, to say the least!! We will be checking out some frames this weekend to make sure we like the options they have given us. The frames I almost ordered are supposed to be warranted for 2 years (supposedly unbreakable) and the lenses are warranted for a year. It's almost as if they think babies will break glasses!! Shocking!! :)
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We have a couple of friends/family who have had babies in glasses. They say that once they put the glasses on and realize that they weren't seeing things the right way, they aren't as prone to want to take them off. I'm not as confident of that yet - I have to see it to believe it!!
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If you know of anyone else who has been in this situation, especially at this young of an age, please point me to them as I'm sure I will have questions if/when he starts pulling them off and refusing the wear them. And here you thought I was going to be completely optimistic about this based on the title of this blog! Ha!!
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But honestly, we are very happy that we took him in to have this checked out. Some future developmental milestones may have been slowed due to vision impairment and we may have come up with other excuses for slowness in certain areas. I guess it is actually a good thing that my eyes are so bad because it made me just assume that his would be bad too. Daddy's eyes are perfect, and we were really hoping that Hunter got that gene, especially when we saw that Hunter's eye color is green like his Daddy's. As my cousin told me yesterday in an email, "...this is how God made them & us and we will be better parents and more sensitive to it by going through it ourselves."
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