little four eyes

You know how in India we have this concept of arranged marriage?? Despite all the modernization of our country we this concept of parents choosing their child’s life partner is still prevalent. A lot of debate has been going on on this. I do not want to get in depth here as it will take forever to understand the concept . A great many feel that a person has the right and freedom to choose whom he wishes to spend the rest of his life with. That in my land is what we call a “love marriage”. You fall in love, and get married to them. It is highly popular with the youngsters. Then there is this “arranged marriage” where the elders choose the bride or the groom. It works very well too in majority of the cases. But obviously there are lot of reasearch to be done based on the education, employment, family background and the list can go on.
I chose my own life partner which was a big deal in our families as we come from a traditional families. But many of my cousins will not have that choice. One of my favourite cousins is ready for marriage and there is a big “looking out for a bride” going on for him.  One such prospective bride had glasses in the picture. She was very pretty and everything looked good. But the elders did not go for it. Reason: glasses. What if their kids get glasses in future??

I lectured them when they asked me for my opinion. I told them my son has glasses at 2. And for no fault of his. Neither of his parents has glasses. Yet he got them. That does not stop anyone from loving him and doting on him. Why should this girl be rejected on that basis then?? I made them understand that the glasses make should not make any difference if they like the girl and infact it made the girl look so much smarter. I was told 2 days ago that the parents are meeting each other to set a date for the wedding. My son with glasses made me and everyone empathize with the girl with glasses. And I was able to make a convincing case for her.  I feel happy now. I cannot wait to dance at the wedding and to meet my future cousin

One look at the doctor and we knew that we were good hands. The best part was despite his illness, our son co operated with the doctor very well. All the tests. I was reading through one of the posts by Ann Z about how it will be a good idea to take pictures of the child with the squint. But we did not know that and the doctor indeed asked to see such a picture. You know what, there were none. None at all. All the hundreds of pictures that we took of our son a week until the squint did not have him squinting. My son poses brilliantly for a camera and being our first born we photograph him a lot. Since the technology is so fast now, we were able to show pictures on the cell phone. Many many of them. The doctor agreed that the eyesight was recent. So after many hours of waiting and the tests, the doctor informed us that our son has a case of Hypermetropia and of a high power. When he said high power we thought it will be +2 or +3 but it was +6. We were shocked. My husband wears glasses of -.25 each and I don not have any glasses. Our parents got their glasses in their 40s mostly for reading. We could not comprehend how much our son was affected. The squint was the result of his eyesight. He will have to wear glasses for a while ( how long is that “a while” I cannot guess ). I asked him how the eyes could have been affected so much in such a short time. He could only venture some guesses since it’s got nothign to do with hereditary a large portion of it could be weakness. And my son was getting sick every 10 days. In the 2 years he has been on this earth, I breast-fed him for a year and he never got so much as a cold ( not lying to my self ) and then we lived in California for the next 6 months and the weather suited him. He weaned off me without any trouble and got a cold just once. We came back to India this August and he started falling sick. I thought it was awful as he was born a Hyderabadi( ppl born in Hyderabad ) and how come the weather played havoc with his well being?? It was not fair

Satya

So coming back to the present day, its been less than a month since his new glasses and he wears them for better part of the day. I took some pictures of my baby in glasses and they are available for viewing at
http://picasaweb.google.com/vempati.satya/FourEyedWonder?authkey=bcvms-1BCqA#
I also took a picture of him without glasses to see if the glasses were doing any good and I think they are. When I focused the light in his eye, he did not squint. http://picasaweb.google.com/vempati.satya/FourEyedWonder?authkey=bcvms-1BCqA#5288201944913013410

In India, some people of the traditional mindset say that a squint in a child is lucky. Esp a right squint for a male child. But being a modern and practical parents we draw the line where necessary. A kid in glasses is laughed at and my son being little and wearing glasses does attract attention on the roads. Sometimes its nice and sometimes its unwanted. But I really do not care about the people on the roads. My son has adjusted well and we have adjusted along with him. We put our faiths in our doctor and right now we are concentrating in building up our son’s health. It going to take
a long time and lots of patience but we are up for it. The dark hair, big eyes and now the glasses. A miniature Harry Potter in our home.

A very Happy New Year to you all.

My name is Suhasini Vempati and I live in Hyderabad, India. When my 2 year old son, Satya, was prescribed glasses to treat an intermittent squint in his right eye due to farsightedness, I feverishly started scouring the net for useful information to help me understand what my son is going through. I came across “little four eyes” and just loved it. It helped me deal with the mom’s guilt that surfaces first when your kid for example is ill. Something’s not right…
Here’s my baby’s story- We noticed his squint in the first week of December. He was recovering from another bout of cold and fever. He was sitting next to me and we were playing when all of a sudden his right eye turned inwards. It was just for a second and I thought I imagined it. He did it again a few minutes later and when I told him off he started giggling. See, he could control his squint so I assumed he was doing it on purpose. Everyone in my family thought the same thing. But a week went by and when it did not go away I took him to his paediatrician who asked me to see an Opthamologist right away. We have a great eye hospital in our city and a dept. which treats paediatric squints. So we rushed and took an appointment 3 days later ( the earliest ).

My son fell ill again and we my husband wondered if he will be healthy enough to get through the exams. We then decided that by the time we are ready to sit in the car if Satya does not have any fever, we will go through. I was desperate to know what is going on. Luckily, our son cooled down ( he had 103.7F in the night ) and we took him straight to the doctor in his night clothes ( a light shirt and diaper ). Part 2 follows…