Peanut and I headed to her audiology appointment. Fortunately today's appointment was at a satellite office of Children's and we didn't have the joy of driving downtown in the rain again!! I can honestly say that I have learned more about children's health and testing over the last 6 months than I have in the past 8 years that I have been a mom. The boys fortunately do not have hearing issues....just listening problems! They have learned selective hearing at a young age!
Hailey passed her newborn hearing screening. It is recommended that children with Down syndrome have their hearing tested every 6 months. Hailey's appointment was in a small closet-size room. It almost looked like I would imagine is a sound booth. They started by looking into her ears to make check for fluid and to see her eardrum. I never realized that your ear canal looks to hairy when it is magnified. It was interesting. They preformed a couple tests that involved placing probes in her ears. They are to check for "normal" ear/hearing function and the performance of the ear drum. Then the longest test was a behavioral hearing test. During this test, the audiologist sits in another room and watches Hailey through a window and administers different sounds at different volumes and in different areas of the room. The other person (I can't remember what her title was) would move her fingers, have Hailey play with a toy and distract Hailey as much as she could. She was reading Hailey's facial cues to see if Hailey which sounds Hailey reacted to. I wish I could have seen her face. She was sitting on my lap facing outward. I think there were a few sounds she actually reacted to but they weren't sure. On the desk in front of Hailey was a toy in a dark black box. When she reacted to the sounds, the toy would light up and move as a reward for Hailey. I sort of felt like she was one of the Pavlov's dogs!
After the evaluation, they decided that they would like to see her again in 3 months. The audiologist said they didn't see any major concerns in Hailey's hearing. There were a couple reasons they thought she didn't react to some of the sounds. Hailey has learned to tune out some noises...she has to incredibly loud and active brothers. She is not in a quiet house and has learned to ignore some of it (or lose her sanity). Some of it also has to do with her age. The audiologist thinks that she might react to more of the noises when she is a little older. Honestly, I think the boys would fail that testing! When either of them are engrossed in a project at home, you can be a foot from them and they won't hear a word!
I'm happy with the appointment. I wish she would have reacted to more sounds but they didn't see anything wrong. There was no fluid in her ear and everything is "working" the way it should.
Ironically, yesterday, the nutritionist told me that we need to be feeding Hailey more food. Well, apparently, my little miss understands more than we give her credit for because she was quite vocal today about being fed. She loved feeding herself a cracker tonight. It was funny watching her work on her coordination. There were a couple of times that she wanted to take a bite so bad but kept missing her mouth!
Tomorrow Hailey has her evaluation with early initiative (Help Me Grow). It seems to hard to believe that Hailey has been in therapy for 6 months already! Hopefully tomorrow I can pick up my new camera (my old one was unrepairable...thank goodness for extended warranties!) I'm tired of fighting our new amateur 4 yr old photographer for my small point and shoot. I think I need to make that one of my posts....Life Through the Eyes of Ian...ha!!! It has been funny!
love these photos!!!
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