Eye stuff

So Gwen and I had an outing to the retinal specialist this morning!

So far our outings to various doctors have been going very well. Tomorrow she has a follow up with the pediatrician she saw for her hospital stay. It will be nice to see Dr. J again, he's very sweet and was good to us--apparently, according to all the nurses, he has *terrible* handwriting, even for a doctor. I don't know how many times I heard the NICU nurses conferring with other nurses about "What do you think this says?" This makes me chuckle. One of those small details that make a person stick in your mind.

But anyway. Today's visit was relieving for me. The retinal specialist, Dr. D, was *very* nice. He is fairly certain she was *not* 38weeks at birth, but more like 34. He thinks she looks 38weeks now based on her retinal development. This age estimate correlates pretty well with what some of the other doctors and nurses kind of felt, as well. I think I tend to believe it, too. All the problems she had with eating and such go along pretty well with premature birth at around 34 weeks.

The eye exam itself seemed not to worry him too much--he felt like it was likely still the benign retinal hemorrhages of newborns, and the blood in her vitreous was most likely just the breakdown of the bleeding that was previously on her retina.

He says she's not out of the woods yet, apparently infant eyes scar much easier than adult eyes, so we'll be going back for fairly frequent rechecks for awhile. Poor kid will have had her eyes dilated so often! He thinks all this is not something we should be *worrying* about, just keeping an eye on. He thought it was probably progressing pretty well.

Thank goodness! That's a big relief off my back.