An Introduction ((And a preface))

It took me a long time to come to the decision to share our journey, but in the last few weeks I've felt a really strong need to unburden myself through writing. I know it's for me, but part of me hopes that if someone stumbles across this blog, or is referred to it during a similar journey, that they can find answers or comfort or just a feeling of camaraderie.

A little background. I have two beautiful daughters and a easy going husband who I love and who make my life full with adventures. I'll refer to my girls as Bug(5) and Tiny(3) as those are their nicknames around here. Tiny is the main reason I'm writing this blog, as at the age of 2 1/4 she was diagnosed with severe to profound hearing loss.

I'll give you a little background.

Tiny wasn't a surprise baby, but she was a difficult pregnancy for me. I was sick 24 hours a day for about 6 months, and on top of it, her dad was gearing up to deploy and then did, just as I started feeling better. She was actually born while he was gone and he saw her for the first time via Skype and he met her for the first time at 3 days shy of 2 months of age. She wrapped him up just as thoroughly as her big sister before her.

She was a full term baby with no complications and and "uneventful birth." She passed her initial Otoacoustic Emissions (OAE) test- which is the hearing screening for newborns, and grew and developed normally, though on the petite side. She wasn't super interested in crawling and walking since she loved to be held, and still does to this day. Becoming mobile was motivated by realizing she could get to the things she wanted to climb, which she did on the highest places she could get while my back was turned.

We realized pretty quickly that she was also a lot quieter than her big sister when it came to talking, though she did babble and would frequently force you to pay attention to her so she could shake a finger at you and make faces or put her hands on her hips or just make us watch her pretend to talk on the phone. She's all sorts of sass with the right amount of sugar most of the time.

When she did start to say things at around a year they were always surprising, and rarely repeated. She told me "Shoe's on" and her Dad "Go fishin" one time and one time only. She would say "I didit" on occasion, Ma and Da frequently, and make other sounds or random words frequently, but it was like pulling teeth to get her to say things.

We had done some baby sign with her, but she would shrug us off most of the time and point and throw a fit until we understood what she wanted.

At 16 months, I started to really be concerned and finally started to voice my concern to a few family members. "She won't turn unless I get loud. She doesn't really talk. I can clap my hands and she only looks at me and turns away most of the time."

The answers I got back were things like, "I wouldn't worry too much, she's a second child and Bug is a big personality and talks for her all the time, make her talk and tell her sister not to talk for her and she will." "Oh, don't worry about that, we have a history of late talking in our family."(From both sides there were brothers that didn't talk until a later age.) "She's just sassy and likes to ignore you because she can see she's getting a reaction out of you. Don't react and she'll learn to listen." And many other things that were meant to be reassuring, but only left me doubting my sanity about it all.

I tried to listen to all of the "don't worries" and the "she's fine's" but something kept nagging me in my gut, telling me there was something wrong. Had she been sick and we didn't know? Had my Tiny been hurt because I had been ignorant of signs I should have looked for? Had she bumped her head? Had I done something to her unintentionally hurt her while we were playing? Had she eaten something that had somehow messed up her brain? Was I not trying hard enough?

At 18 months I noticed she had pretty much stopped saying new things and just before her second birthday I finally decided I was done listening to other people, no matter how well intentioned, and have her go in and be checked out and that is when this journey really began.

((Preface: Some of you may be asking yourselves, Why didn't you voice your concerns to your pediatrician? At the time, the pediatrician we had started with had left the doctors office we were used to going to and I admit, I didn't look into who replaced him right away. We also didn't have great insurance at this point and my husband was still working on a degree and didn't have a great job so we couldn't afford doctor visits when for all intents and purposes our daughter appeared healthy.We also try to deal with things naturally at home if we can, and in general we are healthy folks who only go to the doctor when we really feel the need. This is our choice and I recognize it is not the choice a lot of people make. I hope you can respect that people have different ways of going about things. I respect your choice to do what you want with your kids and hope you can do the same. As it turns out, going to the pediatrician didn't really help us in the grand scheme of things, but I'll talk about that more in my next post.))