This is Our Story So Far - Part 1 - Little Man

Then we come to Little Miss, she is another story all together. Again we had to take the magic pills to conceive, but at least we knew what we were dealing with this time. We are one of the lucky ones to have one of each, we was sure through the whole pregnancy that it was going to be another boy, but I was mistaken. J was blown away, he was kissing the mid wife he was so happy.

I really wanted to breast feed but I am sorry to say that I didn’t even attempt it this time around. I didn’t even want to go there, so she went straight onto the bottle, I don’t think that she is doing badly though. J was bottle feed from day one and he didn’t turn out that bad :o).

We did notice though that when she was born, she didn’t really open her eyes very much in the first few days, occasionally but not that often. It was on about the 5th day of being in the hospital, J noticed while looking into his little girls eyes, that her right pupil was white and milking looking, very different to her left eye. As J was leaving to head home to the little man, he said to me to make sure I check with the pediatrician in the morning, before we go.

Which is what I did, then it all started didn’t it, apparently she had a cataract in her right eye, and if it wasn’t removed within the first 4 weeks of her birth then it was possible that she could lose sight in that eye. Now this is not something that you want to hear when you have just given birth to this beautiful little thing. Hormones are going crazy in your body as it is, you don’t really need this.

Specialists where called in to check her, as we were supposed to leave the hospital that day.  But neither J or I really felt comfortable with the Ophthalmologist and we wanted to get a second opinion. As it so happened, (now this is a little confusing but lets give it a go). J’s mum works for the brother of the top Pediatric Ophthalmologist in Sydney, so she contacted her boss to ask if it was OK if we could get an appointment with his brother. Phew!. We did fortunately and she was booked in to have the operation when she was 4 wks to the day. It all happened so fast, Our other concern was that we didn’t want the little man to think that we were neglecting him, so it was a bit tricky juggling the two of them, but we sorted it out.

Wow it still blows me away as to what they can do these days. The surgeon was able to operate and remove the cataract from a 4 wk old baby, imagine how small that eye is. Wow is still all I can say. She had 6 stitches in her eye and had to have them removed  6 wks after the operation.  After the stitches were removed, she was then tested and fitted with her contact lens, again remember how small she is.

The ladies at the hospital were a great help, they got me to come in to teach me how to put her contact lens in. This was a very stressful time in my life, it took the nurse 3 hours to get the lens in the Little Miss’ eye, all I could think was how am I going to get it in next week, by myself, if it took her 3 hours. All I can say was that there were quite a few trips to the hospital for the first couple of months.  But they were all wonderful and very helpful. We still have trouble now, but fortunately we have got it down to about 10-15 mins sometimes only a couple of minutes, depends on Little Miss and her mood.

She also has to wear a patch to strengthen the eye, she has to wear this for half her waking hours, we try to put it on her for about 5 hours a day. It is not much fun, at first she really hated it, but now she seems to have gotten used to it and just takes it as part of her daily routine. I will post an article on patches and what I have found useful and tips and tricks that I have worked out on the way. It hasn’t been plain sailing all the way, but we have worked it out as we have gone along. I have some good ideas and products that I can help others in this situation if needed.