Daughter just diagnosed with severe-profound hearing loss - please help!

Yes, but rolling, nobody is arguing for no amplfication. We're very pro HA, and even pro CI if needed. ... It's clear she has some hearing that could be amplfied.....the way we're arguing is BOTH.....speech, HA/CI (if needed) and ASL/Deaf ed.
 
True but ASL, DeafED., etc. cannot save residue hearing. Only a H.I. can do that, so my point remains the same......get some type of H.I. on the child asap and leave it there until adulthood then the child can decide where to go from there.
 
messymama said:
That's EXACTLY how we realized our son is deaf!!! :roll:
He still does that, but he does use his voice a lot to giggle, scream and so on. If he wants to, he's able to imitate a vocalization from another person (singing, for example) and is often in the right tune, too, but no way to put voice in his words... The two abilities (voice and articulation) just progressed separately. I think this is because he is very profound, but there are profound kids that learn to voice out some words, even without aids! Our son did that too a couple of times when he was younger, then lost this ability. I think in very small kids voice can come out "automatically", then they can loose it because they get no feedback on it.

But you know, the hard work for a hearing parent is to accept that you can indeed live and be happy without hearing. That our pain and struggle is not necessarily the one our babies will go through. It's ours...
This is the thing I still find harder to remember and cope with. The harder work is on yourself, not on the baby. Your baby will be FINE - whatever she'll hear!
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It is very common for deaf children in hearing families to attempt to voice by babbling, but also using gesture and facial expression, etc. they have observed in their hearing family member's communication. It appears, to all watching, that they are actually saying something in a conversational way, with inflection and all...it is just that the actual voicing is nonsense syllables. This is a clue to many parents that the language is not developing properly, and when they start to seek out medical advice.
 
rolling7 said:
If you cared to read carefully, I was speaking from my birth on. In which case the term H.I. (hearing instrument) is correct because there was not, at that time, a lot of knowledge about hearing instruments as far as how useful and beneficial to the child these H.I. could be.
Nevertheless, my point is children without any H.I. to save/keep that hearing level they are born with will lose it.
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This is a totally incorrect statement.

A child's residual hearing may decrease over time, but that is the result of their loss being of a progressive nature, not the lack of amplification.
 
rolling7 said:
True but ASL, DeafED., etc. cannot save residue hearing. Only a H.I. can do that, so my point remains the same......get some type of H.I. on the child asap and leave it there until adulthood then the child can decide where to go from there.
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Again, that is another incorrect statement. The priority for any deaf child is LANGUAGE, not amplification.
 
deafdyke said:
I am not an audi, but there are still a lot of severe-profounder kids who get a lot of benifit from HAs. I actually have a 70 dcb loss myself. It's good she has some speech already. ...Actually wouldn't that be a sign that she would respond to aiding?
I would contact your state's Deaf School...Deaf Schools tend to have AWESOME AWESOME early intervention and early childhood programs. I don't want to appear biased or anything....but I do strongly feel that dhh kids have the right to be bilingal in both speech and sign. It can be done....That way she can function both with and without her hearing aid or CI.
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I completely agree, I think that having some speech already is a good sign that she would benefit from HA's. Please don't be afraid that if you teach her sign she will loose her speech, most studies have actually found out that children who learn sign at an early age, hearing or dhh, actually have a larger vocabulary when they get older, and the dhh kids may learn to have "better" (as in the normative Hearing meaning of the word) speech.
I wish my parents had started me on sign when I was young, and had learned it themselves.
Get a new audi, maybe one that actually specializes in children, insist on trying HA's before you make the major irreversible decision of CI's. These will destroy any residual hearing your baby has, and though she can take them off, she can't take them out. let me know if you have any questions. :aw:
 
I thought it was a fake. No one would get a CI recommendation in a case like that immediately.
 
Or - could be she's just really, really busy with the new baby. I hear tell the l'il critters do have a way of sucking up all available time!

(Incidentally, ds - how do you like your Opus CI? I met a bunch of people with CIs at the HLAA convention; to a person they all loved their CIs. I don't know which brand was the most popular; I understand there are some differences but I couldn't tell from the literature what effect those differences might have.)
 
Bottesini said:
I thought it was a fake. No one would get a CI recommendation in a case like that immediately.
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Oh, I dunno about that. I can entirely believe that an audi would recommend a CI right away, since the baby is already a year and a half old. I thought the OP was sincere in wanting to explore what HAs could do first.

As many of us know, different audis will be expert in different things, and it's pretty common that they will suggest whatever it is they happen to be expert in. One would HOPE that a parent would explore HAs first, but it's possible the audi had a reason for thinking that HAs would not be successful. Who knows...
 
like what everyone said, try the hearing aids first before going down the CI route
I also have a severe hearing loss

there's lots of other brands out there like Oticon, Phonak etc
for me, I was a Siemens user until I was in fourth grade before I switched to Oticon aids *which are kinda old now LOL but I'm still wearing Oticons now.

good luck getting this sorted out.
 
I have a question: parents of babies implanted with CIs say it's because they want to maximise the use of the auditory nerve. Hearing aids don't stimulate the auditory nerve?
 
I think they do if there is enough residual hearing to use them (like for me - I'm assuming my auditory nerve is getting stimulated), but if the baby is born with very little or no functioning cochlea, then obviously the HAs would not make any difference.
 
DeafCaroline said:
I have a question: parents of babies implanted with CIs say it's because they want to maximise the use of the auditory nerve. Hearing aids don't stimulate the auditory nerve?
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Yes it does. That's why a hearing aid trial is required before CI.
 
Beach girl said:
I think they do if there is enough residual hearing to use them (like for me - I'm assuming my auditory nerve is getting stimulated), but if the baby is born with very little or no functioning cochlea, then obviously the HAs would not make any difference.
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If they don't have a cochlea the CI won't work.
 
Ok, I am wondering why parents feel it's so urgent to implant their babies if hearing aids can do the same job of stimulating the auditory nerve. I mean, why not use hearing aids and wait till the kid is older before doing CI?

I do understand that hearing aids don't work for all deaf people. I am just speaking about parents whose babies CAN get sound from hearing aids but opt for the CI anyway.
 
I can only imagine that it's a very tough decision. If babies get sound from HAs but not enough to process language, the parents probably want to move to CIs more rapidly.
 
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