February 20 - Her fitting

Erin tested Mikaela's hearing again prior to fitting her hearing aids to make certain that the first ABR was correct. Her right ear was about 5 dB better than the first one which originally showed no definitive response. This was only at the lowest frequency. Still considered a profound loss in that ear. The left was consistent and remained in the severe loss range.

For the first ear molds (as you can see by the picture) we opted for clear molds. Her hair is so long at 4 months that it covers the aid itself and you can barely notice she has aids. In the future, we are going to choose colorful ear molds. Hey, if you have to wear them, you may as well have fun with them. I will let Juliana choose the color after the Baptism. Can you guess what she will choose??? For those of you who know her.....PINK! Due to the rate at which babies grow, we can expect to get new molds about once a month for a while, then it may slow down as her growth rates slows down.

So, Erin puts them in and turns them on for the first time. It was interesting to see Mikaela's response! She furrowed her brow ever so slightly as if to say, "What is that?" Her smile disappeared and a look of complete concentration swept over her face. Maybe she was in wonderment of what she was now experiencing. I will be posting a video here at some point when I figure out how to do that. :-)

Immediately following the fitting appointment, we headed over to Rebecca, her Speech and Language Pathologist. She is a certified AV therapist and at this time, this is the communication approach we think we want to pursue with Mikaela. Of course it will depends on the success she has with the hearing aids and subsequent cochlear implant - if that is the way this goes. There are a few different communication approaches which range from sign language to a blend of oral and sign to completely verbal without the use of any signs. The latter being AV which stands for Auditory Verbal.

Rebecca walked us through several things to help teach Mikaela how to listen and hopefully make sense of the sound now coming in. Some examples are clacking a loud toy out of her vision range to see if she reacts thus letting us know she heard it. A "reaction" may be that she stops sucking on the bink, pauses, blinks, and ultimately turns to see what it is. We will also play the "Ahhhh, Boo" game with a toy. Practice the Ling sounds. The list goes on and on. (Oh, if you aren't sure what I mean by Ling sounds, it is a list of five sounds that make up pretty much the majority of the sounds/pitches we use in the English language. Google it if you are curious! :-)

Due to her age and the progress expected, we don't have to come back for three months. If she was at a point where she was rapidly aquiring speech, we would have more frequent therapy sessions. I suppose we'll get back to this in May!