So Many New Things....

There are so many new things going on! First not having to go to Cardiologist visits every month, we are out to every 6-8 weeks,Woohoo!! Second is hearing her cardiologist say "she looks great!" when we bump into him randomly around the hospital while there for other appointments. Then comes the new things Little Miss Scarlett is doing. She now waves hi and bye, she blows kisses and is babbling like there is no tomorrow!
Yes, I know every parent is full of pride and joy when their child does something for the first time, but a whole new level gets added to that when it is something that you were told they would never do! When Scarlett was about four weeks old and still in the hospital recovering from her first surgery, the genetics team sat down with us and told us that our beautiful baby girl was likely deaf. I did not believe them, I just knew that she could hear, but there is always that part of you that goes "what if they are right?' My heart was heavy that my baby girl may never be able to hear my voice, or her Daddy or her big brother. I never gave up hope that she could, I still sang, talked and read to her like I would have if I had never been told of the possibilities. As she grew older she started to make eye contact and tracking and I was convinced, at this point, that she could hear even though she failed her hearing test time after time. When she was in the hospital the second time, sedated I would sit and sing and read to her and tell her about everything that Noah did that day. By 6 months old she still had not started to coo or "babble", so I started to get a little nervous. While she was in the NICU at Walter Reed they thought she had an ear infection, but couldn't see into her ears, up until this point at her well checks her ear canals were too tiny for them to even try to look into, so the ENT doctor did an exm with a microscope. The result: Ear Canal Atresia, her Ear Canals do not open all the way to her ear drums. After this discovery a different type of hearing test was performed, where they send vibrations through the skull and she responded almost perfectly to that one! Several months later, in June, she recieved her Baja, a bone conduction hearing aid. Here we are now on December 7 and she has finally started "babbling", and creating consonant sounds. She has been "OOO" and "AAA" ing for a while, but we wanted to hear the consonant sounds and today we got them "dadadadadadada" and "babababababa". I could not have been happier to hear my baby girl talk! It is an amazing feeling knowing that the trouble of her hearing aid (somedays) is worth it!

Scarlett wearing her Baja and riding the train with her big Brother Noah.

I am still working on the one year post,patience please, the pictures are giving me soo much trouble! :)