Seeing Eye.

I am having technical difficulties with my Luzern photos, so I thought I would give you an update on the baby-with-glasses situation.

Many of you wondered how they calculated Simone’s prescription in the first place, and I don’t blame you. Babies can’t read, and they’re wiggly, and they are terrible at following instructions. This seems to suggest that eye charts would be a poor choice. And in fact, there were no eye charts involved. Instead, they put dilating drops in Simone’s eyes (which she just LOVED, as you can imagine) and then we spent 20 minutes alone in a small windowless exam room full of intriguing equipment that Simone was not allowed to touch (ALMOST AS MUCH FUN AS THE EYEDROPS!), waiting for the doctor.
For the exam itself, the ophthalmologist shone a light in Simone’s eyes, a light with a little plastic monster perched on the top, and then held a sequence of lenses in front of each eye to shine the light through them. Apparently, the dilation keeps her eyes from compensating and allows the doctor to see the pupils…focus? Or something? I don’t know. All I know is that the pediatric eye gypsy waved her lenses before Simone and pronounced her +6.00 in each eye. The prescription itself is only +4.50, because all babies are somewhat farsighted.

So we ordered the glasses, and picked them up, and strapped them on, and suddenly it was very, very obvious that Simone had not been able to see, before. This is one of those things that makes me feel like I should win some sort of Bad Mother trophy. A heavy one, studded with jewels. Jewels shaped like tears. I would never have suspected that Simone had any trouble seeing—in fact, the ophthalmologist asked me about it before she began the testing, and I cheerily said “Nope! No problems at all!”
But once the glasses were on…well. How had we been so blind?

Simone never showed any interest in television. I was pleased, because it meant I didn’t have to worry about having it on around her. Of course it also meant I was unable to induce to her sit through the Baby Signs DVD I bought, but whatever.
You can see where this is going.
With the glasses on, this disinterest has mostly evaporated. She doesn’t always notice it, but certain commercials, cartoons, and Sesame Street sketches captivate her. Our first evening home with the lenses, Scott put on the Cartoon Network as an experiment, and it was hilarious and humiliating to see her reaction.

We had expected to have difficulty getting Simone to wear the glasses, but that has not been the case. Sure, she whips them off from time to time, but in general, she seems to like them. And this is just a shot in the dark, but I am pretty sure it is because SHE CAN’T SEE WITHOUT THEM ON.

Her motor skills improved virtually overnight:

She can stand on her own now indefinitely, though she has yet to take her first steps, and even her language skills have exploded. For the first time, she knows a word: “Kitty.”

Of course when I say she knows it, I do not mean she can say it recognizably. It usually comes out “GEEGEEH!” or some variation thereof. But when I say “kitty” she looks at one, and repeats the word gleefully before crawling over to lick its fur.

Most dramatic has been her sudden infatuation with books. Sure, she liked them okay before (at least Louise, Adventures of a Chicken), but now?
Now this is what I see, ALL DAY LONG:


She has her favorites (markedly distinct from MY favorites, it should be noted), and after I finish reading one and set it down, she picks it up again and thrusts it at me, saying “BUH?” (her all purpose exclamation).

I read it again—recite it from memory, really, letting her turn each fat cardboard page—and this time set it discreetly behind me, picking up another book, one I haven’t read 357 times by 8:00 in the morning. Guess what happens next?

Sigh.

A few days after she got her glasses I made an emergency run to the children’s bookstore down the street for more books, my god, MORE AND DIFFERENT BOOKS. It is obvious from the way she points to the pictures now and turns each page and understands the act of reading, that before she got her glasses, these were just big blurry squares of nothing to her.

Her discovery of books has been one of my favorite moments of parenthood so far, one I had imagined for years, but it was made a tiny bit bittersweet by just how glaring was the evidence it provided that she hadn’t been able see, and I missed it.

When you have a preemie, it’s easy to chalk up missed milestones or clumsiness or, well, ANY idiosyncrasy of your child to her prematurity. There were so many things Simone wasn’t doing that she “should” have been—stacking blocks, finding hidden objects, pointing to things—that could have been clues to her poor vision. To be fair, Early Intervention made all the same assumptions I did, but I can’t help but feel bad that she hadn’t been seeing the world, and I can’t help but wonder how much potential progress—toward that mythical goal of “catching up” with her full-term peers—we lost.

But mostly, I’m just enjoying seeing her SEE things. Even if it does mean I am about to read Goodnight Gorilla for the 4,998,563rd time.