Strabismus

I decided to research a little about what's going on with Landon's eyes. The doctor never told me a name for what it is that he has but going based on what I read it seems he has somthing called Strabismus. I guess when babies are born most of them have that cross eyed look and it usually isn't all the time and it goes away. In Landon's case it didn't.
Here's what I read on Strabismus...

Newborns often appear to have crossed eyes due to a lack of developed vision, but this disappears as the infant grows. True strabismus does not disappear as the child grows.

Visit your eyecare practitioner if you're unsure if your child has true strabismus. The earlier the diagnosis and treatment, the better the visual results. Without treatment, your child may develop blurry or double vision. [See also: Children's Eye Exams]


What Causes Strabismus?
Strabismus may be caused by unequal pulling of muscles on one side of the eye or a paralysis of the ocular muscles.

Occasionally, when a farsighted child tries to focus to compensate for the farsightedness, he or she will develop accommodative strabismus. This condition usually appears before two years of age and can occur as late as six.

Strabismus Treatment
Treatment for strabismus is similar to amblyopia treatment: vision therapy including patching or visual exercises, glasses with the correct prescription or bifocal or prism correction to aid in proper focusing, eyedrops to help focus or surgery. Surgery will correct the misaligned eyes but cannot resolve amblyopia caused by strabismus.


Strabismus is a condition where your eyes don't look toward the same object together.Some eye surgeons disagree about the appropriate age for an infant or young child to undergo surgery to correct misaligned eyes. But new evidence suggests that it may be important to correct strabismus as soon as possible so that motor skills such as crawling and grasping can develop appropriately.

In early 2008, researchers at the Retina Foundation of Southwest Texas reported an association between accelerated development of motor skills after infants with strabismus underwent corrective surgery.

Before scheduling a child for surgery, some eyecare practitioners inject the ocular muscles with Botox (botulinum), which temporarily relaxes the muscles. In some cases, strabismus is permanently corrected in this way.

(By Judith Lee and Gretchyn Bailey; reviewed by Vance Thompson, MD
http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/strabismus.htm)


Sometimes I get really frustrated with doctors. When he was 2 weeks old I said I thought there was something wrong with his eyes. Now he's almost 11 weeks and we have to wait until December for our appointment with the Pediatric Opthemologist. It's pretty annoying. At least I know that there is a reason for the "crazy eyes".
I'm hoping that this will explain why he doesn't really smile at anything yet. He has smiled once or twice but he should be doing it more. I guess seeing double would be pretty confusing though. How would he even know what he's looking at?
Hopefully we can get this all taken care of and he'll grow up to be a perfectly happy, healthy boy.