What’s the Sign for “Whorl?”

She can hear! Actually, it turns out that Simone has better hearing than I do. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I have a partial hearing loss in my right ear, and have since I was young—the result of chronic ear infections. It doesn’t affect me much unless I am watching a television program full of mumblers (Mad Men, I’m looking at YOU) or trying to listen to something while an air conditioner or similar appliance is on in the background.
But this isn’t about me. It’s about Simone! And how she can hear!

The audiologist this morning was amazing. I am fairly certain that a run-in with this woman is what inspired Shannon Sossamon to name her child Audio Science. The audiologist we saw before gave up moments into the Stick-Things-In-Your-Ear Evaluation, as soon as Simone started wiggling. But Linda, my audiological hero, made funny faces and did the hand-motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, and generally so enthralled Simone that she couldn’t have cared less what was probing her and where. The tympanogram (puff-of-air test) showed no fluid in either ear. We also nabbed a fairly conclusive, healthy OAE response from the right ear, but by the time we got to the left ear even Itsy Bitsy Spider was losing its charm, and the results were more questionable.
Simone was long overdue for a nap by this point, and in fact had been a whining, thrashing beast in the waiting room, my first experience out in public with an un-shushable child. It is a peculiarly awful feeling when your baby is the one screaming in a quiet waiting room and nothing you can do will soothe her. I spilled half a bottle of milk all over the carpet, and even the fish in the fish tank seemed to be judging my parenting skills. Anyway, that is all beside the point, the point being that Simone was overdue for a nap, and I was doing my swing imitation with her all swaddled up, and dear, sweet Linda said “Hey, why don’t you try to get her to sleep, and we’ll do an ABR right now!” And I did, and we did, and it was completely and totally normal in both ears.

After that we woke Simone and did some behavioral testing (and someone should have WARNED ME that there was a PIG in the speaker box—it looked like a plain old speaker, and the one time Simone turned to it when it produced a noise, it’s insides lit up to reveal a stuffed, hat-wearing porcine creature, and I almost fell off my chair). The final verdict is that Simone has an Auditory Developmental Delay. We have been given a bunch of exercises to do to help her catch up, most of which involve drawing her attention to sounds by acting like a complete tool (OH! IS THAT THE PHONE???? LISTEN TO IT RING! RING RING RING! IT’S THE PHONE! YES IT IS! Etc.). We will see Linda again in six weeks and have therapy through Early Intervention in the meantime, with the hope that we can squash this before it interferes too severely with speech/language development.
Of course no one want to hear the words “developmental delay” applied to their child, but we will muscle our way through this, and whatever else is thrown our way (Simone seems to have some feeding issues with solids, for instance. Another post for another day). For now, I am going to concentrate on how grateful I am that my daughter can hear EVERY VERSE of Oh I Wish I Were a Little ‘Lectric Eel. We are still going to do baby signing, because I think the idea of being able to form language before you have the ability to communicate sounds nightmarish, and it’s no WONDER toddlers are so cranky, under those circumstances. But I won’t deny that I’m pleased to avoid having to figure out whether my puns translate in ASL.