YOUR BABY'S EYES
I will not claim to be a pediatric optometrist, but I do have many resources at hand to decipher fact from fiction.
Fact: The vision of infants is not real clear during the first few months of life. VISUALLY EVOKED CORTICAL POTENTIALS (VECP) is one method to estimate the vision of infants. It's a bit like an EEG where the visual cortex of the brain is stimulated by various objects, including checkerboards and gratings. VECP acuities are in the range of 20/400 during the first few days of life and improve to near 20/20 at 5-6 months. Another method of testing infants' vision is the OKN (Optokinetic nystagmus) test. This test is performed by slowly spinning a drum that contains vertical stripes in front of the child and watching his eyes for quick, jerky (nystagmoid) movements. The OKN test usually reveals an improvement from 20/400 to 20/100 from 2 to 6 months postterm.
Fiction: An infant's pupils are typically larger than an adult's.
In fact, a baby's pupils are quite small. The average size will increase throughout childhood, maintain a normal size through adulthood, then begin to decrease in size in the elderly.
Fact: Babies are able to focus or accommodate greatly by the age of 9 weeks.
By the age of two months most infants are able to focus and converge their eyes at close range. Before that age, you may notice that your child's eyes move together, for the most part, but do not converge.
Fiction: Most infants prefer to look at moving objects with distinct shapes.
Actually, most babies would rather look at your face. "Facelike stimuli are preferentially viewed by newborns, raising the question of innate perceptual organization." By one month of age your child can perceive the difference between a circle and a triangle,
and by 3 months of age he is able to perceive a certain level of stereopsis (those 3-D stereograms).
Fiction: Blocked tear ducts in an infant will most likely require surgery.
In the 4-6% of neonates that have a blocked tear duct or dacryostenosis, 80-90% of them will resolve spontaneously within the first few months of life. There are massage techniques that should help with resolution, and antibiotic eye drops if an infection is present. If the condition persists, with chronic tearing and crusting, a probing of the lacrimal system may be performed, but usually not before 6-12 months of age. The procedure has a very high success rate for a permanent cure.
Fact: If both mother and father are nearsighted, there's a good chance that their child will eventually become nearsighted.
It certainly is not a GIVEN, but if both parents are myopic (nearsighted), then there is a strong chance that 3 out of 4 of their children will acquire some level of myopia. It is similar to associating two tall parents with rather tall children. It is also not unusual to find various eye muscle imbalance problems running in families.
Fiction: If you see your baby's eyes cross or wander outward, it is a sign of a permanent eye condition.
Actually, it is quite common to see your baby's eyes wander on occasion. Remember that eye control and good fusion does not occur until the 2nd or 3rd month of life. However, an eye that stays turned in or out after 3 months should be evaluated by a pediatric eye specialist.