InfantSEE

Our pediatrician recommended a free comprehensive eye and vision assessment for Will and Sophia both around the age of nine months. InfantSEE is a wonderful, free, public health program that will examine babies between the ages of 6-12 months regardless of a family's income or access to insurance coverage. Their goal is promote eye and vision care as an integral part of infant and child wellness, as early detection of an eye condition may help ensure appropriate development.

Craig took Sophia last night to see the same optometrist that Will saw (only now he has an office even closer to our home!) We really like this doctor and he remembered Will. The doctor has a daughter in my mom's preschool (my mom is one heck of a social connector with her job - LOL) and is currently building a new home near our house. Anyway, he said Sophia was the best behaved baby he's ever examined! She didn't make a peep or squirm or fidget at all as he shone lights and held various lens up to her eyes. He then put drops in to dilate her eyes, wait 15 minutes, and do all those same exams again to see how her eyes responded. Her eyes are continuing to change and develop as she ages so the doctor is mostly concerned with seeing that the muscles around her eyes are developing at the same rate so that one eye isn't having to work harder than the other. In that circumstance, the brain may give up on developing the weaker eye and the doctor could prescribe a lense to help balance the eyes and trick the brain into continuing normal development.

In our case, Sophia's eyes and muscles are developing equally and normal so that's good to hear. He did say she may be slightly farsighted but that that may also change. Craig and I are both nearsighted. I don't know much about the numbers and prescriptions, but for example, Craig knows that he is a -1 and the doctor said that Sophie is a +1 (where "0" would be 20/20). So given her healthy exam, she doesn't need to be seen again until age 3. Will should probably have another exam this summer after his 3rd birthday.

One other interesting tidbit: the doctor noted Sophie's large fleck of brown color on the bottom of her right eye. Her eyes are currently blue, but she has a little bit of brown in her right eye, which I always thought was funny. When Will was a baby and his eye color started to change from blue to brown, both of his eyes looked like a color wheel with varying shades of blue and brown in different places. I noticed the one darker fleck for Sophie when she was just a few days old and assumed it meant her eyes would eventually change to brown as well. That fleck has since gotten a little bigger, but still only on the bottom of one side. The doctor says that is actually the equivalent of having a freckle on the eye. No harm, no problem, but that he thought her eyes would likely remain blue. I tried looking back at pictures of Will to see when his eye color was noticeably brown. I thought it was around 9-ish months (which seemed late to me) but in pictures, they don't really look brown until after a year. So who knows what Sophie's will do. Here's a close-up picture of her blue eyes where I think you can see the brown pretty clearly.

For more information on the InfantSee program, visit: http://www.infantsee.org/