Her Beautiful Eyes

First for the easy stuff. Baby girl had her 2 month well check today and she is getting to be a big girl! She is now 11lbs 5oz and 23 1/4 inches long.

Now for the harder stuff. I have been putting off telling people about baby girl's eyes because I wanted to know what was going to happen first. I figured it would be easier that way plus I would have some answers of my own instead of having to say "I don't know".

Going back a bit when she was born she had a lot of dark spots on her eyes and forhead. We had figured that it was bruising because she was rather large and born pretty fast. At her 2 week follow up though the spots over her eyes had not faded away as a bruise would have and showed no sign of doing so. The pediatrician referred us to a specialist just to be safe. She had her first appointment with him a month ago and he confirmed there was definetely something going on. What though was the question. He said that he thought it was a hemangioma which is a growth. You will see these on other parts of the body mostly. Since it's around her eyes it would have to be treated or she would likely have vision damage. The decision was made to wait a month and watch how it grows to see which would be the best way to treat it, either laser or steroids.

Today we had our 2nd appointment with the specialist and it didn't go at all like I had thought. At this appointment he said that in fact it does not look like a hemangioma, that it is actually a vascular malformity. I think I spelled that right. Anyways, what it boils down to is she will have to have surgery. He wants to try and put it off until she is closer to 5 or 6 months since she will have to be put under and should handle the procedure better than if we were to do it now. Plus she will have more skin and area to work with so it will be easier for the surgeon to do what he has to do. He also said that if it is not obstructing or causing visible problems then he may want to wait a little longer than that and take it month by month.

So again we wait. We'll get a call in the next week for when she will need to go in for a CT scan. This will tell them just how deep it is and an idea of size and what they are dealing with. She'll then be scheduled for sometime in August when she is 4 months to see the specialist again so he can check the growth progression again and then make the decision from there.

In the mean time while at home we just have to keep an eye on it. If her eyelid starts drooping, looking like it's puffier, or if her eye itself doesn't move as it should we'll have to take her in right away and the whole process will get moved up. The other side of it is once they do the surgery it won't be the end of it. She'll have to have check ups for awhile afterwards to make sure that they got it all and that it doesn't start to grow again.

Whats really sad is it's very likely that Mr. X won't be here when she gets the procedure done. So goes the military life I suppose. I'm thankful though that I have several very good friends who I know will be there for us if he isn't able to. I know he'll be worried about his little girl though and hopefully there won't be a huge delay in communication for us. We shall see though.