News about Nickie

You might remember that Nickie has been having some trouble with his motor skills for the last few months and that we had him booked into both an eye specialist and a paediatrician. Well there have been some developments in the story. Just some background info about me, I was born with a turn in my right eye which was caused by the eye muscles not behaving. I am also very near sighted and have quite bad astigmatism. I had quite a few operations as a child trying to fix the muscles to correct the turn and help my eyesight. I have also worn glasses since I was younger than Nickie. As a result of this when Nickie was born I wanted his eyes checked by a specialist just to be sure they are ok. From my experience I have learnt that the younger a baby can be treated for eye conditions, the better the long term outlook is. He saw the eye specialist when he was 8 weeks old for the first time. By that time we thought that one of his eyes were turning in at different times briefly, but as it was not all the time we were not sure. The eye specialist thought it looked ok but wanted to monitor Nickie on a six monthly basis until he was older as he explained to me how when babies are little their eyes can move around freely until their muscles get stronger.

We then saw the specialist when Nickie was 6 months. Again the specialist said it was hard to tell what was going on with his eyes. He said that babies are born with the ability to correct their own vision quite well and that by age one or two they lose that ability and that perhaps we would have to wait longer until Nickie loses that ability and his eyes get a bit worse so we can see what is actually going on with them if anything. In the meantime the health nurse and Nickie's daycare brought up concerns that he is slow with his motor skills, so I booked him in to a paediatrician on their advice but always wondered if possibly it was all to do with his eye sight not being as it should.

The plan for this month was that Nickie was being assessed with his daycare to see if they could apply for extra funding so someone could come and work with Nickie on a one to one basis to help him in the areas he is behind. This was carried out the funding for the daycare was approved so starting this Monday he has someone coming to work with him. Then we were seeing the eye specialist Wed Feb 17 and the paed on Tues Feb 23 hoping to get some answers on what was causing the delay in his motor skills. At the eye specialist on Weds we got the answers. It turns out that Nickie suffers from a condition called Accommodative Esotropia. What this means in plain English is Nickie is far sighted which means he can see things just fine in the distance but is having trouble seeing things that are close to him. The turn in his eye we have noticed is not a muscle turn like mine it is just the eye struggling to focus and therefore every now and then it is turning in. The solution? My baby is getting glasses! Apparently once his glasses are on and the vision problems are taken care of the eye will no longer be struggling to focus and the turn should stop happening. Surgery is not an option to fix it as the problem is caused by Nickie's eyeball being made too short and there is no way to fix that.

I am pleased the problem is something so simple and we can easily fix it, and I am happy to know he will be feeling a lot more comfortable soon once his new glasses come. The only thing I am a little sad about is babies glasses really are not nice. They are big and bulky and have a big strap at the back to keep them on. Not trendy like adults glasses. Also they are hard to come by so the choice is not really there. After ringing 10 different places yesterday I finally located an optometrist that sells babies glasses and took Nickie to try some on. I had one choice of style and two choices of colour: pink or blue. Needless to say I went with blue. The lady there was so nice to me and gave me a little pep talk with how she realises they are not the best looking things but that if I just wait till he is 2 I will be amazed at the variety of choices I will have to pick from. She showed me some of the two year old glasses and she is not kidding - there are lots and they are very cute. I guess we just have to wait for him to be at an age where he can understand not to pull them off and break them and so he can also stop other kids from touching and breaking them. Also of course they are made of safe materials in case they get smashed or broken so he won't get hurt.

So there you have it. We still are seeing the paediatrician but not till May now so he has time to adjust to the glasses. And we go back to the eye specialist in 5 weeks.