Preemie Eye Discharge Experience
About a week after we brought our preemie baby Kaylee Jane home from the NICU I noticed both eyes started having a thick discharge that came from the inner corner of her eyes..eeek!
I called the eye doctor she had just seen for her preemie eye exam to screen (blog)
I was immediately concerned about the procedure they did to check her eyes for Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) worried that may have caused this.
They reassured me most likely no, but to keep an “eye” on her (no pun intended) and to wipe her eyes with wipes I picked up from their office.
Still alarmed, I googled a little bit of why this can happen and especially in preemies. I am not a doctor, I consulted ours and encourage you if you're reading this to do the same and have your baby seen just to be on the safe side.
Bringing a baby home is a big event and in our case bringing our preemie home from the NICU had me personally “extra” on edge if there is such a thing. Newborns have their set of babyhood things that pop up.
I was extra on guard bringing our preemie home and this was definitely the first thing that popped up out of the blue that I went down a rabbit hole trying to learn what may be happening with my tiny preemie’s developing eyes.
I read “sticky eye” “goopy eye” “neonatal conjunctivitis” “nasolacrimal duct obstruction” and other terms can be found on the internet.
Patience: In our case it took about a week for Kaylee’s eye discharge to completely clear up. I kept in touch with our eye doc and pediatrician, taking photo progress reports.
Keeping her eyes as sanitary as possible: The eye wipes we were given from our eye doc were for one use only, and one corner used to wipe to discharge away from the eye. Never to mix wipes or use the same wipe for both eyes. Yuck! My eye doc shared that it can cause more problems.
Kaylee started rubbing her eyes so I would use baby wipes to routinely wipe her hands.
It goes without saying keeping baby clean is important.
Not sure what I think about this but for breastfeeding moms there has been articles about a drop of breastmilk helping clear up any discharge in eyes.Interesting.. (It’s #2 on this list by Today’s Parent) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.todaysparent.com/baby/breastfeeding/incredible-things-to-do-with-breastmilk/amp/
Update:
I was so relieved when her eye discharge cleared up. She is now 6 months adjusted age (8 months actual) and has not had any discharge or watery eyes since that first week home from NICU.
