Re: Is the human eye full size at birth or does it grow with the child.

Dear Kai,
 Thank you for your interesting question about eye development. The 
eyes of a baby do appear enormous and a lot of people believe that 
humans are born with full-sized eyes. It is however not the case.
 The measure of choice for evaluating the size of the eyes is the 
antero-posterior length (the length from front to back), as it is the only 
optically significant dimension. This length averages 17.3mm at birth, 
and averages increase to 20mm at one year of age and 22 mm at 
three years of age. The eyes stop to grow between 8 and 13 years of 
age, at the average length of 23mm (Vaughan and Asbury, 1986; 
Fledelius and Christensen, 1996).
 The relative shortness of the eye at birth is compensated by a very 
spherical lens, which has a very high refractive power. As the eye 
grows in length, the lens grows new fibres around its periphery, 
making it flatter and diminishing its refractive power (Vaughan and 
Asbury, 1986). Neat interaction, isn’t it!
 
References
Fledelius and Christensen (1996), British Journal of Ophthalmology, 
     80(10), 918-921.
Vaughan and Asbury (1986). General Ophthalmology (11th ed.) 
     Lange: Los Altos, CA