Charlie's Eyes

So, When Charlie inherited my brown eyes, he also inherited my not-so-perfect vision. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 15 months old...before I had hair :) Because of this, I was asking Charlie's pediatrician how soon we could check Charlie's eyes when he was only a couple days old.  I don't even really remember the answer he gave but basically we could wait a couple years if we didn't see anything concerning. As Charlie grew we he seemed to be focusing on things fine, even watching tiny ants crawl across the ground. We hoped this meant that he got his daddy's eagle vision. I was still very interested in him getting checked as soon as he could and definitely before he started school. I had an optometry appointment shortly after Charlie turned two and I asked that optometrist about his eyes as well. She recommended that kids get checked around 3 years old. He still had a year before he could be checked unless I saw anything concerning. He seemed completely fine, I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything. In August this year, Max started to notice that Charlie's left eye was wandering a bit. This was usually at dinner time so I just assumed it was because he was tired and just didn't feel like making his eyes focus. We finally decided to make an appointment with the pediatrician, we would have to have the pediatrician looks at it and then refer us to an ophthalmologist if something seemed wrong. I was able to see the pediatrician soon and of course, Charlie's eye didn't wander at all at the appointment but he is also two years old and it's hard for him to focus on anything. Two pediatricians looked at it and didn't see anything concerning, one of the doctors even said he probably just had an extra fold of skin that was basically making it appear like his eye was wandering (optical illusion...we were pretty sure that wasn't it) After all that, they still referred us to the ophthalmologist since I was still concerned.  

 It's kind of hard to tell but his eye is wandering in both of these photos.

This is me with my wandering eye. 

The bad news is that it is a 2-3 month wait to see the ophthalmologist and it was quite the long wait seeing that his eye was getting worse and wandering more frequently.

We finally were able to see the ophthalmologist which was an awesome experience, just as I remember it as a kid. You get to play with toys and watch cartoons...
We found out that Charlie is far sighted just like me but not nearly as bad. His Perscription is +2.75 in each eye and mine is +7.5 (the farther from 0 is worse, negative is near sighted and positive is far sighted.)They said he would need glasses and after wearing glasses for 2 months they want to check him and see if he needs a patch on his strong eye to strengthen his weak eye. (I wore a patch as a kid too.)

When Max got off work we went to the Eye clinic to pick out Charlie's glasses. At first he was excited to try on glasses but he quickly had the biggest meltdown of his life. He had a long day and after a long nap he hadn't eaten in quite awhile.

I liked these glasses a lot but I felt like they distracted from his cute baby face too much.

Miles got in on the action too.

And here was the meltdown.

It took almost a week but we were finally able to pick up his glasses. He has moments where he's excited to wear them and moments when he hates them, so we are still working on it. My strategy is to put them on him while he's watching a movie so he forgets they are on. Eventually, he will realize he can see so much better with them,  If anyone has tips on children keeping their glasses on...let me know. 

We don't know how this will affect him in his future with sports or other activities but we will find out. In the meantime, we think little kids in glasses are absolutely adorable so there's that.

And that's me with glasses many years ago, 

The point is...if you are concerned about your child's eyes...check them out, even if the pediatrician says it's just an optical illusion. :)