Our pediatrician has referred us to a Pediatric Ophthalmologist (Cynthia Beauchamp) due to Harper's clogged tear duct. We have been dealing with this since bringing her home from the hospital & it doesn't seem to be getting any better. We massage it several times daily & are still constantly wiping the goop out of her eye. It's to a point now, where I can look at her & she'll have a blob or two just floating on her actual eye. Almost every time she wakes up, her eye is stuck together. Poor baby! So as much as it pains me, we are going to have to do more than massage the hell out of it & wait for her to grow out of it. I've done some online research & it seems that the common treatment is strapping her to a table & probing the tear duct while another treatment involves general anesthesia. Oh help me.
Have you or anyone you know had experience with this? I have left a message with a technician (same as a nurse?) at the doctor's office to ask all my questions, although I'd really love to talk to someone who's been through it. What was the actual procedure like? Did the procedure actually work? Does your child hate you now? Did your child have bloody tears afterwards? How long did that last? Was your child out of commission for the rest of the day? Has anyone been to Dr. Beauchamp for other reasons? Were there any side effects of the procedure?
Any advice or consolation is appreciated! We go Thursday morning at 10:30. Say a prayer for my sanity & of course for Harper. Stay tuned for the 9 month post. Harper is finally back on the charts with her weight - 8th percentile! I'm so proud.
I was actually going to email and ask you about harper's tear duct b/c i remember reading about it in a past blog. Eloise has the same thing and it has not cleared up and don't see it 'healing' itself anytime soon. With this weather and big brother parker loving on her constantly she is always stopped up making it even worse. I will be interested to hear what they say but have heard of the probing which freaks me out! I am bringing it back up at her 6 month appointment in June to see what advice our ped has. I hope it all goes well for you and you get what you need to make an informed decision. talk to you soon
ReplyDeletesarah
Hi MM - Claire has a blocked tear duct and we have been dealing with it since she was about 2 weeks old. Our pediatrician told us it was pretty common, although I have not heard of any other friends’ babies that have it until I read your blog. So although I wish none of us had to worry about this, it is nice to know that it is common. For Claire it seems to come and go, but sometimes it is pretty bad - puffy & gooey. And of course when it is clear, we forget to do the little pushes...and then it comes right back and it is bad again. Please keep me posted on what you decide to do for Harper. It doesn’t seem like Claire's blocked duct is going to clear up/heal on its own, and we certainly can't continue to "push" on her eye for the rest of her life...so maybe surgery when she is a year old will be necessary…ugh…Good luck! xxoo
ReplyDeleteWe are in the same boat! Will probably have to do a procedure at nine months. My friend did the procedure with her son- will get some info for us :)
ReplyDeleteTrace had a clogged tear duct when he was a couple week old. Doc. gave me drops to put in it and told me to massage it. It went away then came back a couple of months later. Still had the drops so I used them again and massaged it and it went away. The drops seemed to make it go away pretty fast, each time. It hasn’t come back since (and that was probably around 2 or 3 months old). So sorry to hear you are still dealing with Harper’s.
ReplyDeleteSo, don’t have experience with any kind of procedure for that. However, Lilliana got tubes in her ears and had her enlarged adenoids removed around 10 months old and had to be put completely to sleep for that. I worried SO MUCH, but it was all okay and she felt TONS better after her ears weren’t infected anymore! Then there was the time I rushed her to the ER thinking her windpipe was closing up (turns out it was Croup). She had to have a breathing treatment and even though I demonstrated painlessly that this mask with a fog coming out of it was harmless, she wasn’t convinced. Try as I may she was not going to do it willingly. The nurse said “you have to make her.” I had my legs wrapped around her entire body and one arm holding down her arms and had to force her to do the breathing treatment for 10 MINUTES! She screamed and flailed about like she was being tortured the entire time. It still upsets me to this day to think about it! I felt sure she was going to grow up and hate me for it. Maybe she will, but I doubt she’ll remember it at all! It could have been a matter of life or death with how significantly labored her breathing was, so I had to do it. It wasn’t fun, but thankfully it helped a lot.
Harper is only 9 months old. She will not hate you, she won’t remember it!