Hello.. I am Darci. I have an 8 month old (Well 8 months on Monday) named Noah. Noah was born with several birth defects. The biggest concern was his esophageal atresia, in which his esophagus is not connected to his tummy. He has had a few surgeries for that and has a few more to correct it. With that all going good, the next concern was the birth defect on his right ear. The external ear itself is very tiny and slightly deformed, but that is just cosemetic. The concern was his hearing. The newborn hearing screening showed no response in that ear, while the other side is fine. So we got a referal to an ENT-- who basically said "Why are you here? You need an ear specialist", but ordered a BAER at 8 weeks old. They decided to do it without sedation because he was so young and easy to get to sleep. Well he woke up during the test, but we were told that he had a moderately severe hearing loss on that side and to come back in a couple months to retest. A couple months passed and we repeated it this time with sedation. There was not much change, although he did go from 65 to 55, still severly profound. This time they were able to confirm that he has a functioning cochlear. Then we went to see the ear neurosurgeon. He is very hopeful to eventually correct his hearing. He wants to wait until he is around 5, when the ear gets its full growth. When the time comes we will probably have a couple different options including an implant or surgery to "create" ear canal. It really depends on the CT.
We are looking into getting the signing time dvd's though the normal hearing in his left ear compensates for the other one.
Is there the possibility of a hearing aid for him, or not until the outer ear is corrected?
I do know that having hearing only in one ear still makes things challenging from reading what other moms have said about it.
We used Signing Time! videos ourselves and have nothing but good things to say about them.
Have you contacted your local early intervention office? They should be able to evaluate your child for his needs to keep him on track or get him caught up. Some offices are better than others. Ours was not helpful, but with other people's assistance, we got them to provide what our daughter needed. (She had speech therapy from about your son's age to three years old.)
We were able to see the ear neurosurgeon last month (finally it took almost 9 months to get in) He is very pleased that Noah has a functioning cochlear. However he is not going to do anything until Noah is about 4 or 5 other than yearly hearing tests.
When the time comes Noah will have a CT to look for a ear drum ect. If all that is present then we will decide on what course of action works best for him.. Either a surgery to create an ear canal or a implant device.
A hearing aid is not an option for him because the ear canal itself is not correctly formed. The ear canal forms out of a bone that just halllows out in the center.. his never finished hallowing out.
We did get the signing time DVD's last week (EI paid for them). I think they are really cute.
Meet Dodie702
This Nevada mom of two - who are just 18 months apart! - is married to her high school sweetheart and loves to craft in her free time.
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- darcibeisheim
on Sep. 12, 2009 at 12:18 PM