Evie's First Eye Exam

Evie had her first eye exam last week. She did really well and managed not to cry or scream much at all, although she did squinch her eye closed really tight when the student tried to put the second set of eye drops in. She knew what was coming then.

It is crazy how hard an infant eye exam is. They do all the same tests they would on an adult but they obviously use different methods and lots of cajoling and toys. Here's some of the stuff they did that I can remember:

• tested her eye pressure (air puff of doom test for us) by pushing on her closed eyelid
• tested vision (do you prefer 1 or 2 for us) using cards with series of alternating black/white lines of varying widths which are pre-calibrated to certain prescriptions and by holding refractive lenses up to her and watching her look around
• dilating her eyes and looking into them with a head-band microscope thingy. This looked particularly challenging since she kept moving around
• patching one eye at a time to run tests sicne she can't cover one eye or close one eye at a time upon being instructed to do so
• checking her eye muscles and movement by having her 'track' a fun toy with her eyes but without moving her head (again challenging)

And so on. They did great and so did she--it took a little under 2 hours because of all the trickery needed. The student and attending optometrist were both crawling around on the floor and holding out all sorts of toys and then picking up the equipment they let her borrow that she then kept throwing on the floor and all sorts of craziness. You should totally take your baby (if you have one) for an eye exam because it is good for checking their vision and eye health of course but it is also pretty entertaining watching doctors try to get your 9 month old to cooperate.

According to the developmental survey they did, Evie is doing really well and in most instances is at 12 month functioning:)

The bad news is that we know for sure that Evie was able to see some of the awful happenings during the very tragic OSU-Florida game last night. We are all still very sad. She even wore her lucky socks, which we will now have to retire.