At Texas Children's...going in for our dreaded eye exams...
Eye exams in the NICU were pretty horrendous. They would wrap the babies up super tight to keep them from moving and use metal clamps to hold open their eyes. Then they used a metal tool to apply pressure to their eyes to see how the blood vessels were developing. The babies would SCREAM like no other and would take hours, if not a day to recover. This happened weekly until after the trio came home and to this day still makes me sick and sad to think about. After we were cleared when the babies were infants, we didn't have to go back until they turned one. Our one year visit was nothing like the NICU exams but it was still traumatic and the babies left scared, upset and hurting.
Once they turned four they were due for another exam. Not only was I nervous about the actual exam, I was sure at least one of the three would leave with a prescription for glasses. Turns out, there was nothing to worry about...the exam was a normal eye exam, no pinning them down and prying their eyes open...hooray!!! And the very best part is that we got an awesome report. After two and a half hours of testing and waiting, we were told that all three of the triplets, have 20/20 vision and the specialist said the most he thinks they'll ever need will be reading glasses when they get older. I was teary eyed as they told us the good news. I can't believe how blessed we have been.
* And just because I'm so proud of them, I'll share this story. After the initial checkup, the kids had their eyes dialted and we went to the dark room to play. A resident came and took the kids one by one to test them and then the doctor did the same. The doctor was checking his findings with the residents and said, that both his numbers and the residents numbers were exactly the same which rarely happens (they are usually off by a few marks and take the average). The resident told him that it was because they never have kids as well behaved as ours who will sit still and listen. The doctor agreed and said that they were some of the best kids he's ever treated. Awwwww!!!
Mickey, Minnie and Pluto came along and got checked out too!
Logan getting his eye patched (and you can't see but Pluto has his eye patched too!)
Logan was also our "superhero" and went first to get checked.
So proud of them :)
