Flashback Friday - Glasses!

It is really hard to believe that Ben has been wearing glasses for 1 year now! He got them one year ago this week. I remember it being one of the hardest weeks. More from the anticipation and dread than anything else. We found out when he was 9 months old that he would have to start wearing glasses for spontaneous ambilopia (he has the beginning of a lazy eye. He is far sided and much more so in his left eye than his right eye so he was just using his right eye to see). We caught it very early so hopefully there will be no long term damage. I know that glasses are not that big of a deal but when it is your 1 year old they are talking about it seems like the end of the world. I worried so much about how it would change how he did things. I read so many blogs of babies with glasses where the moms gave horror stories about how rough it was. I talked to people that go through glasses monthly. I was just dreading it.

But the minute he put on his glasses he said "wow!!" And he started looking around at things very closely. He really couldn't see well before. We had a little bit of trouble keeping the glasses on the first week but since then not a problem!! He wakes up asking for them and very very rarely will he take them off. He fell and scratched them up pretty bad about 3 weeks after getting them so we had to replace the lenses but other than that there have been no major issues. Just minor adjustments. I feel so thankful and blessed. He got a bigger pair of glasses in the fall because he outgrew his first pair.

We had been told by a couple of doctors that there was little chance of his eyes ever getting better but we went to the eye doctor last week in Birmingham and there was some improvement. His eyes had gotten closer together!!! The doctor said he didn't really expect that to happen because if anything it was supposed to get worse. So we are just thankful. We got to order new lenses this week that weren't quite as strong. And we go back in 6 months instead of 1 year to check and see if it is continuing to get better. It is doubtful that he will ever get out of glasses but the doctors say that maybe by the time he is 6 or 7 he can get contacts (that seems crazy to me!)

So here are some flashback pictures of his first days with glasses! I let him have his paci more to bribe him to keep the glasses on.