During the first few months of Ariana’s life we noticed that her right eye would wander in a bit from time to time.
At first we thought it was just a normal baby thing and that the eye would stabilize as she got a little older. However around 4 months old Ariana’s pediatrician recommended that we see a pediatric eye doctor. When we went to see the Dr. he told us that Ariana was near sighted and would need glasses to help with her vision when she got older. He also said that her eye that was turning in had misaligned muscles and that it might correct itself naturally or it might get worse. We followed Ariana’s eye condition and received 2 other opinions from pediatric opthamologist over the next 8 months. At that point all the Drs. we saw recommended just watching and monitoring the eye condition.
Around Ariana’s 1st birthday we noticed the eye crossing much more often. It seemed like over a few weeks it started crossing inward almost half of the time. The PO we had decided to go with started her with atropine drops to blur her stronger eye so that she would be forced to use her weaker eye more dominantly. After several weeks with the drops we were still seeing the crossing very frequently. At that point we also began to patch her stronger eye several days a week to attempt to continue to strengthen the weaker eye and started to talk seriously about at surgery. The PO advised we do the surgery as soon as possible to avoid further amblyopia of the weaker eye. Within a matter of weeks Ariana had the eye muscle surgery and recovered easily.
We were very happy with the outcome of the surgery. Her eye appeared to be completely straight and the PO was also very happy with the results. At 18 months old the PO prescribed glasses to start correcting Ariana’s myopia. Slowly over the next 6 months the PO continued to raise the prescription strength a little at a time so that Ariana could slowly adjust to the lenses.
We were very sad when we first noticed that Ariana’s weaker eye was starting to occasionally drift in again when looking at things at close distance such as her storybooks or when she was coloring. However the PO addressed this problem by adding a bifocal lens to Ariana’s glasses. The bifocal seemed to help tremendously and the eye crossed much less frequently.
Recently Ariana had another eye check. For the first time she was able to read some letters and name some pictures that the Drs showed her. We still patch her weaker eye 3 days a week and she wears glasses full time. The Drs anticipate that Ariana will need glasses or contacts for the rest of her life.
They hope that she may grow out of the need for the bifocal and that she will develop better binocular vision through the continued patching over the next several years. At our last appointment the Dr told us that Ariana should have good depth perception and be able to play sports, and drive a car and have a completely normal life.
So here we are 2.5 years old, 8 different pairs of glasses frames (4 broken, 1 lost, 1 outgrown, and 2 that she wears now), 5 different lens prescriptions and about at least thousand patches later. Ariana loves to dance, jump, run and to read books to her younger sister. She is so smart, energetic and joyful and absolutely awesome.
