Now I see....

For everyone who has been around Keifer you have seen his watery eyes. For those of you who have not, both of Keifer's eyes have watered and backed up constantly since he was born. When he was about a week old it was getting pretty bad. It was constantly yellow buildup coming out of his eyes and sometimes there was so much that it would dry on his eyelashes and "glue" them shut. So one night while rocking him I got on my phone and googled watery eyes. Once again I was surprised at how common this was and I love having google to turn to. : ) I felt much better to know this was common and not a serious problem. All the things I read was a few drops of breast milk will clear it up. I thought that was a little strange and I was hesitant to put breast milk in his eye. One or two days after I read that a friend of mine, Kristi, came over and told me her daughter had the same thing and to just put breast milk in his eye. Being the second time I heard it I tried it. Talk about multi-purpose, it cleared his eyes right up. The bad thing was just for a few hours at a time. I talked to Kristi again and she said that sometimes if it is a little worse then you might have to get eye drops from the pediatrician. That next week we were going to meet with the pediatrician for the first time so I decided to ask her about it. She explained it was clogged tear ducts and very common. I told her I had tried the breast milk and it only worked temporarily so she said it was time to try eye drops. Jason and I were not too happy about having to already use a "prescription" on our 2 week old but decided his eye was not something to mess with and didn't want to cause him permanent damage. 

Well after putting one eye drop in each eye four times a day and not too much improvement I was starting to wonder if the eye drops were even worth it. It was time to take Keifer in for his 2 month appointment so we brought up the eye issue again with the doctor. She said if the eye drops didn't work then the next step was to wait and see if they unclogged on their own or take a rod and stick it down in his eye to break loose the "clog." Well all I could tell you was that was a big negative from the moment those words touched her lips. So we decided we went wait and let his little body clear it up on it's own like God intended it to. After another 3 weeks or so his right eye had completely cleared up and the left one had gotten to the point where it just watered like a tear and no more color in the drainage and it didn't do it all the time. So I assumed the left one would be clearing up on it's own soon like the right. Was I wrong! At 3 months his eye was still watering and starting to get red all around his eye, swollen, and hot like it had a fever. That's when I started to get a little worried and realized we have to do something. I knew the pediatrician's next step and that was not even an option for me so I tried some natural approaches.

I tried getting his cranial adjusted, massaging the inside of his eye and apply a hot washrag on his eye. All of these things worked but just like the breast milk only temporary. My sister in law, Amy, gave me the number to Dr. DeVore in McKinney who is a another chiropractor who had done some laser therapy on both of her children and it worked great. I was so excited to give him a try that I called him that day and he was able to get me in within 2 hours. He had done some muscle testing on Keifer through me and found that it was a viral infection in his eye. That was what I thought. I told Jason before I took him that the redness, swelling and fever in that eye had probably turned into an infection from the buildup. Dr. DeVore did some cold laser work on his eye and gave me a supplement to take for a viral infection so Keifer could get it through my breast milk. This was on a Thursday and he said if it wasn't cleared up by Monday to bring him in on Monday or Tuesday. His eye looked a lot better and was to the point that it only watered at night. Unfortunately, Wednesday it was starting to get bad again. Dr. DeVore had already told me he was going to be out of town the rest of the week so I had to wait for the following week to schedule another appointment. He was able to get him in that next Tuesday so we went in for a second treatment and no luck. The next day it had only gotten worse. I hadn't finished taking the whole bottle of supplements yet so I waited to see if that would clear it up before I tried anything else. Again, no luck and at this point his eye watered constantly to the point I had to have a burp rag close by at all times to wipe it.
I met with a friend, Stephanie, who is a nutritionist and has helped during my pregnancy. One thing she told me to do was eat 3 cloves of garlic a day. I wasn't super excited about that cause I knew I would stink and NO ONE would want to be around me if I ate that much garlic. However, if it would have helped him I would have done it without a second guess. Luckily she told me that maybe that wasn't that good of an idea because it could change the flavor of my breast milk and he might not take it. Phew... I got lucky on that one. Her next idea was to spray colloidal silver on his eye. (a liquid germicide that kills viruses and bacterias and many other uses) I was suppose to meet her the next day to get the colloidal silver and she was going to make some phone calls to see if she could find out any other options. So I loaded him up to go see her. (It just so happened that it was the day he turned 4 months) Stephanie gave me the colloidal silver and also told me to steep 3 bags of chamomile tea into 8 ounces of water and absorb the tea with a washrag and do heat compresses on his eye three times a day and then one spray of the colloidal silver after. She told me to do this for one week and if it wasn't better we would look into some other options. I was hopeful but didn't want to get my hopes up. After all we had been dealing with this for 4 months and multiple other things have failed me.

So step one: Steeping the tea

Keifer just patiently waits while I put the rag on his eye. He doesn't try to fight me, he is such a sweet baby!

I had to go buy chamomile tea so I didn't get to start this process until Saturday. By Sunday his eye looked so good and didn't water once. I wanted to make sure that this wasn't one that temporally took it away and brought it back so we continued. We only have two days left of this and his eye has never watered or turned red once since Saturday. I'm so happy we found something that worked and so thankful for friends with wonderful knowledge to keep our little boy healthy in a natural way!

I'm proud to say at 4 months and 1 week my little boy has two good eyes. : )