60db Baby!

Oops ... I don't know what happened, but I totally deleted the first post with this name by accident! AHHHH! It was the one time I had peace & quiet in the house with everyone asleep and time to catch up on Aiden's journey. Now we'll see if I can get it out again before my crew is up & going!

So much has happened over the last couple of weeks ... the biggest one being MY BABY IS HEARING US! HE IS SHOWING SOME GOOD RESPONSES OVER AND OVER! Just typing that brings tears to my eyes. I mean just three months ago I was being told that he was profoundly deaf (no response at 110db) and that hearing aids probably would not do anything for him. BUT THEY ARE!

We did behavior testing last week and with spoken language he tested at 60db with his aids!! (this is in the moderate-severe loss range and does not include the sounds of speech, so he is still on the path to cochlear implants). Aiden's daddy, our wonderful audiologist, and I all saw the binky business response and one time he even turned toward the speaker!!! Hello tears ...

I asked our audiologist HOW he could go from testing at a 75db just a month ago and now be testing at 60db. It didn't make sense to me. She said that, 1. he's becoming a better test taker, and 2. his aids are working for him so he's becoming more aware of sound and therefore showing more responses to them. I still was a little iffy ... I'm a very black/white person, show me HOW you can prove he's hearing at this level by just watching him; but as his mommy, I saw it too, my baby responded and I knew it! Aiden has been showing us many responses this past week and here's a few examples.

On Sunday, Aiden's dad called me as I was on my way to a baby shower. Him and Aiden were practicing different learn to listen sounds, when Aiden once again, repeated the ahhh sound to him! He was so excited he called me to let me listen ... sure enough, Mike would "ahhhhh" and Aiden would "ahhhh"! My heart melted! What a video moment - next time!

Yesterday morning I got off to the side of him and started saying the ling sounds (oo, ee, ah, ss, sh, mm) and Aiden would get real still and sorta dart his eyes around like "where is that coming from", then continue on. Then I'd do another sound, he'd get still again, and after another "ah" he actually turned, looked at me, and gave me a huge smile! I wonder if he just sensed me, smelled my scent, or maybe my baby just heard his mommy's voice and turned to see her! More tears ...

Go here for a good explanation of the Ling sounds and where these sounds fall on the speech banana. You can see on this chart that the "ah" sound falls closest to 60db and this is why he probably responds most to this. What surprises me though is that he has responded a lot today to my louder "shh" sounds (static sounding). Every time I said that sound today he would just stop and get this "WTF" look on his face!

We play pat-a-cake a lot and Aiden LOVES this game! In our recent therapy session with Miss Helen, she taught us to create "powerful moments". These are moments where a baby will begin to realize that something fun is going to come next. So during pat-a-cake the past few days, I've done a lot of pausing between lines. During this silence, Aiden gets so excited and belts out some pretty exciting screams "hurry up mom ... throw it in the pan!" I wonder if he can hear the inflections (is that the right word?) in my voice and knows there is more of it to come!

Oh yeah, and we had new ear molds made the other day (again). This time we got blue/white swirls (which I didn't know we could do) for our upcoming vacation to the beach! He barely even flinched this time. He's becoming a little pro at sitting nicely while the put all that cold goop in his ear ...

Aiden is going to be okay. Not only okay ... but GREAT! He is such a happy child who makes me smile all day long! We are so blessed to have him! This journey is absolutely amazing! Aiden is absolutely amazing and I would not change one thing about him!