I Want You to Hear

Sensorineural. Conductive. Audiogram. Milestones. What are all these new vocabulary words being thrown at me and my new baby? This became our reality years ago when my first child failed his newborn hearing screening. His tiny little ears were soon adorned with rather large super-powered hearing aids. The best of the best on the market and even those floppy devices couldn’t bring enough sound to those tiny ears, to hear my voice.Having no history of hearing loss on either side of the family, we didn’t even know what questions to ask at that point. Months passed by, then years. We introduced him to his new little sister with what little signs and gestures we had developed as our communication methods. We were introduced into the Cochlear family by our doctor as our next step toward living in a hearing world full of possible speech, language, music, and voices.While little sister was developing her babble, her various toddler words, we were shocked to find out she too had hearing loss. She soon progressed to severe levels as we prepared to our son to undergo his first cochlear implant surgery. Our hopes were high and expectations low as our now almost four year old would either soon begin to hear the world that had been so quiet, or he would remain in silence.Not only would he receive the gift of hearing, but his sister would soon follow in his footsteps. We had therapy as a family to learn how to learn how to hear and how to develop appropriate speech and language. It was ...
Source: Cochlear Kids - Category: Audiology Authors: Source Type: blogs