Goslings strabismus

 Gosling has been wearing glasses for almost 3months now, shes done amazingly well keeping them on for the first 2 an a half months, but the last week or so shes been looking over the glasses, and taking them off more in the last few days. My hope is that her eye sight has improved and thats why she doesnt like them, when we first put them on her it seemed like she actually liked it, she happily nodded when we asked her if she wanted her glasses in the morning. now she seems indiffrent to them, shes not bother if they come off. It could just be boredom of them, but fingers crossed its improvement. she has her second eye appointment in june. we have to go back every 3months to check her eyes.
 I say EYES because though she has a strabismus, shes also long sighted, very long sighted apparently, and its unclear whether the eye turning was caused by her eye sight, or if her sight has been damaged by the strabismus, the left  eye by turning, the right eye by compensating.
Strabismus runs in my family, my brother got glasses at just before he was 3 i believe, he also had to wear patches as the eye had become lazy, and eventually had to have an operation to correct the turn. It still turns in without his glasses.
When I first noticed Goslings eye turn i hoped i was imagining it, that i was being paranoid. but when my partner mentioned it i took her straight to the doctor, who confirmed that yes it was turning,and no that's never good. Children don't out grow an eye turn. sometimes the eye might look like its turning but its actually just set differently, but if the eye is defiantly turning then it needs to be fixed before the brain stops trying to correct it and the eye becomes, lazy, and if that's not fixed then the eye will lose all sight, like my uncle.
Obviously this all really upset me, and it was 2weeks before we got our referral letter, then a month before our first appointment. During that time the eye turned more frequently and more dramatically. It broke my heart to see it.
I started using flash cards to encourage the eye to focus and follow, doing gesture songs more often and anything i could think of to improve hand eye co-ordination. And in the last few weeks before the appointment her eye seemed to improve. i was hoping they'd say she just needed more eye therapy or a patch to make the eye stronger.
Instead i was told that 18month old needed glasses. I was crushed, thinking it would be battles to keep them on, that she'd hate it, that she wouldn't be able to roll about and jump and wrestle or she'd hurt herself on them.
I was wrong though. She was happy to wear them, the improvement noticeable in minutes and the thick, horrible nose piece i hated protects her from bashing her nose.
The fact that she got caught so early is good, all the doctors were impressed I'd noticed so young and although they couldn't say whether she'd permanently be long sighted they're positive they eye won't become 'lazy' and she shouldnt need and operation. They said each appointment should show an improvement and as she gets older the tests will be more accurate. I'm actually lucky they saw her at all, when I'd been research it all the sights suggested that under two years is too young.
I did hate seeing those huge ugly glasses on her, everyone said she was cute in them but it took a while to see it, at first the only thing that consoled me was when one of my best, brutally honest friends said to me ' those glasses are awful, she'll hate the pictures when shes a teenager!' that made me laugh, (i guess i have a cruel sense of humour :P ) and I realised that it wont be long before we can pick out prettier, big girl glasses instead of the baby ones (which are still too big since shes so young!) or even, if we're lucky,  she might not need them at all.
For now though, shes a silly, brave, fearless, geeky (loves books an watching manga), car loving, muddy puddle jumping, rawring, awesome lil girl. And the only thing the glasses change is the size of the beautiful, now even bigger, eyes <3 


to read more about her condition please click the link below
strabismus-and-amblyopia

 not even the worst photo :(

 much better! loves you x