Eye Exam

All premature babies are at increased risk of vision problems and a disease called retinopathy of prematurity ("ROP").  All premature babies born under a certain birth weight receive an eye exam in the hospital at 36 weeks. Ella and Sadie's eye exams were yesterday.  The doctor asked whether I planned to stay and when I said yes, he asked whether I planned to watch.  The latter of the two questions prompted me to follow up with, "What the hell are planning to do to my daughters?!"  I may have caught him a little off guard... he eventually picked up on my sarcasm and went on to explain that the examination may look a little barbaric but assured me that the girls eyes would be numb and that this was the only way to accomplish the exam.  He would use a metal contraption with little prongs that would hold their eyelids open and would then take a small blunt tool to stick in the back of their eyes to move the eyeball around so that he could see what he needed... of course with the aid of a very bright light which he would shine directly into their eyes.  Sounds awesome.

Curiosity got the best of me and so I decided to watch anyway - it definitely doesn't look comfortable, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.  Since I was watching, he took the time to explain to me what he was doing and what he was looking for.  He probably only paused for mere seconds to look up and tell me what was going on - but it sure felt like forever as he held his blunt tool in the back of Ella's eyeball and provided me with an explanation. After that I acted much less interested so as not to tempt him to prolong the exam just to tell me what was going on (especially since I have absolutely no recollection of what he said...).

In hindsight, I kind of wish I would have recorded it. However, I have once again failed you, so instead of seeing my girls' eye exams... I invite you to watch this delightful little video from YouTube of some other poor baby's eye exam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5a1DP30IyM

The girls were pretty wiped out after the exam... either that or they were high.  I choose to believe they were just sleepy.