Not Another Eye Exam

Post date: Jan 22, 2011 1:43:58 AM

January 21 - Grady Jeremiah had his third eye exam this week. The picture below should show you exactly how he felt about it...

Good Eye Exam Report --- Grady Jeremiah screams when they check his eyes! In fact, after the exam he would not open his eyes for two hours and "defended" his face like you see in the picture above. Despite his protests, we were pleased with the report from the optometrist. There is no sign of "retinopathy of prematurity," a common eye problem among premature babies. In other words, the blood vessels in his eye appear to be developing correctly. In addition, the doctor looked at what he could see of the endings of the right optical nerve, which appeared to be underdeveloped in the MRI earlier this week. The optometrist did not see any problems with the part you can see at the back of the eye. We are very pleased with that good report. Please continue to pray that he will not have any vision problems related to prematurity, the missing septum in the brain, or the underdeveloped right optic nerve.

Good Breathing --- Grady Jeremiah continues to make great improvement in his breathing. He is now going several days without any bradycardias, or heart rate drops related to lapses in breathing. He still has the occasional breathing lapses, but those mostly occur when he is eating or having a bowel movement. One of the criteria to go home is to go five days without any bradycardias. Please continue to pray that his lungs will develop and that the breathing lapses will completely stop.Good Eating --- Today the speech therapists came to evaluate his bottle feeding progress. He definitely decided to "show off" for them and took his second full bottle today without any struggle and without any breathing lapses! They said he did the best of all the babies they worked with today! They said his suck-swallow-breathe coordination and rhythm was excellent. However, he still is not able to do every feed via bottle as it makes him tired. Another criteria to go home is to do all feedings via bottle without any problems for 48 hours. Please continue to pray that he will gain strength to be able to take all of his feeds via bottle.

Please be praying for Julia and I to stay healthy... We both had some feelings of a tickle/scratchy feeling in our throats in recent days. I (Grady) was feeling better today. However, Julia had more drainage and decided to spend the day resting at Ronald McDonald House to err on the side of caution. Please pray for all three of us to be healthy! We do not want to expose Grady Jeremiah to anything, but it is so hard if we are not able to be with him.