Laine and I met with a lady that works in a program called beginnings. She will be around until he is 22 years old. <I>BEGINNINGS for Parents of Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing is a non-profit that helps parents and families understand hearing loss, and the diverse needs of children who are deaf or hard of hearing </I> We learned that there is mild, moderate, moderate to severe, severe to profound hearing loss. The audiologist At Forsyth said he has mild hearing loss. But with the beginnings lady said with his number she was confused because it seemed to her she was seeing moderate hearing loss. She requested for me to get his graphs of the tests to see his brainwaves on how he reacted to the sounds he had so she can plot them. Without his hearing aids, he can’t hear the softer words such as; f, s, th, k, z, x , etc. so it makes you think, how many words or sounds he’s actually missing. Example; sit on the chair. We would hear perfectly, for him? It on e air. Make sense? Anything below that line he can hear. But with his hearing aids he can hear the, “ sit on the chair.” If you look up a diagram of the ear( I’ll insert a photo). His outer, and inner ear seem to be perfectly fine, there isn’t any fluids in his ear. But the inside of your ear is basically where the sound will travel to go through to the brain. As you look at these photos, you’ll see a word called, “ cochlea “ someone with mild those tiny hairs are possible broken or bent. Someone with profound hearing loss, they won’t have any tiny hairs which means they are completely deaf. The sound needs to hit those hairs in order to hear and comprehend those words that get sent to the brain. She have A LOT of information yesterday and I tried my best to keep my attention on her and such. Laine was being fussy in the very important parts… so basically all of it. Lol.
As a mother of a hard of hearing child, it is very overwhelming. It makes you think, what did I do wrong? No one in my family has hearing loss. Did I not eat healthy enough ? Is he going to be behind on walking, talking, speech impediments, etc. The answer is, I didn’t do anything wrong for this to happen. It just happens, there is nothing wrong with having hearing loss. You’re still human. They are SO MUCH help out there, and I hope Laine lives a happy life and loves his hearing aids when he gets older. As the lady said, he could not even have a speech impediment, but that’s okay. Because we are all here to help me through everything. It makes me worry, I get myself emotional and worked up because it scares me, we don’t know if it will get worse as he gets older or if it will stay as a mild hearing loss. Today the 14th, a lady from wake forest baptist health brenners children’s hospital, she’s an early intervention services coordinator which is North Carolina infant-toddler program (CDSA). She’s going to be working with Laine physically to help him with his hearing and development. They will be with him until he turns 3, and then onto a plan we will set up for Laine. Since he doesn’t have profound hearing, I don’t have to do the American Sign Language. But, we don’t know if it will get worse over time. I would like to learn ASL. I’m currently starting with one word at a time, such as milk. It’s an everyday thing, so I’ll use it everyday when I get his bottle. We are still waiting on getting an ekg. I shall keep everyone updated throughout the process.