Blocked Tear Ducts in 2 month old

[MamaHavoc]

My daughter is 2 months old and has had goopy, crusty eyes since birth. Our family doctor told us this is caused by blocked tear ducts and suggested gentle massage to try to help open the ducts and using breastmilk to keep the eyes from getting infected. Neither of these appear to be helping much. She hates the massage and when I clean her eyes (which is several times a day) and I often forget to regularly put breastmilk in her eyes. Any advice, reassurance or shared experience with this would be greatly appreciated.

[Adaline'sMama]

Not much advice on what to do, but a good way to remember to put the breastmilk in is to put a big X on your hand with sharpie marker and everytime you pull your boob out to nurse just squirt a little in her eyes. Thats what I did when DD had an eye infection.

[tropicana]

just keep doing the massage, and wiping away with a warm, wet cloth.

i've BTDT with *both* of my children. 

in both cases, the tear ducts cleared up slooooooowly over many many months.

in case you are interested, there is a surgery (minor, i'm told) in which they open the tear ducts manually. they need to put the child "under," but i was told that they can do it in office without anaestesia (sp) if the child is very young, which, at 2 months, yours might be.

[34me]

My 15 yo ds had a horrible goopy eye as a tiny guy.  One day I looked down at him and he had his finger stuck behind his eyeball.  I let him bring it out, took the socks off his feet, put them on his hand and the problem was solved.  Now of course, I've never heard of anyone else having such a weird kidlet....

[Bokonon]

In most cases, this will resolve on its own by 12 months.  Keep doing the massaging and squirting the breastmilk, but it may persist for a while.

My son's didn't resolve, so he had the surgery to open it up at 17 months.  He actually had a membrane across his tear duct, so it wouldn't have opened on its own, which we didn't know until surgery.

[BabySmurf]

DS was one of those babies too.  i forget how long it took to actually clear up, but i think something like 3 months or so for us.  i was really bad at being consistent with massages and never really squirted milk in his eyes....it just kind of cleared up on it's own. 

[kiwiva]

My DD had 2 blocked ducts. One cleared in the first few months on its own (4 months, maybe) but the other didn't do so until she was 14 months. I had my eyes tested and mentioned it to the eye doc, saying that the pedi opthamologist had told me they don't really know if the massage works but I could do it. This doc told me to do it using more pressure than I had been and lower down on the nose. I did and two days later she woke up with no more goopy eye.

As I said, we did see the pedi opthamologist when she was 6 mos or so. She said if it didn't clear, they'd fix it surgically but not until at least a year and most do clear before then. The surgery takes only a minute, but it does involve anesthesia, obviously.