The pediatric ophthalmologist prescribed glasses for A- to help keep her right eye safe now that she’s more mobile, to protect the only vision she has. No grade, just polycarbonate lenses.

Many of the parents in the microphthalmia support group we’re in are fans of Miraflex glasses, which are flexible and pretty much toddler-proof. There are quite a few local shops that carry them. I’ll take A- in for a fitting when the weather warms up next week. It’s a bit pricey, but insurance will cover this one. We might need to pay for the next one out of pocket, but we can figure out how things are going then.

From other parents’ experiences, I expect that we’ll need to help A- get accustomed to wearing them. Some kids really don’t like wearing glasses, and other kids eventually get so used to them that they want to wear them all the time. A- will be influenced by the way we approach things, so it helps to think things through.

Because her lenses won’t have prescriptions in them, there’s no built-in benefit for her in terms of clearer vision. If we’re lucky, she’ll think of them as a way to imitate us, since W- and I both wear glasses. If I develop a matter-of-fact approach to cleaning and putting her glasses back on, she may accept it as just a thing we do, like how we hope to treat wearing her ocular prosthesis. And then of course, there’s letting her pick out her own frames when she gets a little older (plus maybe a few inexpensive ones as backups, depending on how things go). If we invest the time and energy to get her used to them now, she might accept them as part of her life before the boundary-testing of the toddler years.

One more thing to keep track of, plan for, and take care of, but that’s okay. We signed up for all of it. :)