6 week update

It has been 6 weeks since Hattie has entered into the world of hearing.  This has been, and continues to be an amazing process!  Cochlear implants are a miracle from God using modern medicine.  Even on days that I am exhausted from talking and narrating the most mundane daily tasks to her, I must remember the gift of hearing that God has given our daughter.  

"I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders.  I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High." Psalm 9:1

Hattie has been making great progress.  At our last audiology appointment she was responding to sound as low as 25dB in the sound booth.  This is amazing, as her residual hearing was as loud as 105-110dB before surgery.  Most of us, with normal hearing, cannot even begin to imagine what a change like that would be like.  She has handled this new change really well.  The smile I get every morning when I put her implant on is priceless!

Another great improvement has been the ability for Hattie to recognize and differentiate sounds associated to different toys that we play with.  One of our daily therapy activities includes me asking her to pick out a different toy by asking for it by name and then making the sound associated with that toy.  For example, "Hattie, where is your car?  Beep beep."  I have been trying to catch some of this on camera, but once my phone comes out she is a lot more interested in that than what we are doing :)  I was able to get this video the other day, however.  Now, before you watch it, bear with me...I am going to be a bragging mom for a second.  In the video I asked Hattie to find her train.  I was waiting for her to pick out her train toy that was laying in front of us.  However, my little smarty pants turned around and picked out her train book that we read over and over and over.  I felt like that was such a smart thing to do because we do not focus on that book when playing with her therapy toys, and she remembered that her train, or "choo choo" was in that book.

And one more video just for fun.  Last Thursday we started playing the "how big is Hattie" game.  I took this video on Saturday!  

I will completely admit that I think my child is very smart, but what mom doesn't :)  However, my main reason in showing these videos is to give you an idea of what we work on and to see how fast their little baby brains absorb new information.  Hattie's progress is just another reason why it is so important to have the newborn hearing screenings when a baby is born and how important early intervention is.  We are so thankful and blessed to have been able to provide Hattie with the best care possible as early as possible.