We are about 10 days away from SJ having her cochlear implant activated. Right now SJ has the internal device, but that doesn’t mean anything without the sound processor, which is typically given 3 weeks after implantation. When scheduling the activation the Doctor gave me several dates to choose from. I had to pause for a moment to let it all sink in. I am selecting the day that my daughter will hear. They actually call it her hearing birthday. She will start hearing from that day forward. I chose the soonest date possible of course!

Am I excited? Yes, absolutely, but to be honest I’m guarded.  This isn’t the first time I have expected SJ to hear. The first time was after the initial sound booth test. I felt confident that she was not deaf. We left the ENT’s office doing our own hearing evaluations. We would ring bells, shout her name, look for reactions as airplanes flew overhead and she never responded. One time I went in the bedroom where Z and SJ were still asleep and I banged some pans together loudly. Neither one of them woke up so that experiment was kind of a wash. Then we got the hearing aids and when they turned them on they said it would be gradual because they wanted her to be able to adjust to hearing. Sometimes I thought I saw her making progress with the hearing aids, but still nothing significant.

I feel like I have spent the past 8 months trying to catch flecks of dust floating in the sunlight. I want to reach for something and really be able to grab onto it. I want to know that she hears and I am hoping it will not take extensive detective work to be able to recognize it. J and I have been given a lot of information from her team preparing us for the realistic and even then there has been some confusion about what to expect when they turn the implant on. In order to alleviate some of this confusion for us and everyone else I emailed her Doctor. This is part of what she said in response.

The first day is different for everyone.  When I turn on the implant,
she may hear beeps, bells, or whistles at first.  Or she may hear
voices that sound more like Charlie Brown’s teacher or mushy speech,
or it may sound close to normal. I would suspect that our voices will sound
more like Charlie Brown’s teacher for the first week or so. Then,
after she is wearing it consistently, voices and speech will sound
more normal. 

She will be able to hear soft sounds, voices, airplanes-all on
the first day. No sound will be too loud, because I will control that
volume on the implant.  Her “hearing” with the implant will be normal
or close to normal when the CI is on.  She may not be able to
understand what you are saying right off with the implant although she
is technically hearing you, but the understanding part will follow
shortly.

Right when I turn the implant on, she may have an awesome reaction,
like pointing to her ear, laughing, etc. or she may have a not so
great reaction, like crying.  Like I said before, every child reacts a
different way.  Basically, expect any reaction as a sign that she is
hearing!

So that is what you can expect from SJ on her hearing birthday, and you can expect me to be a nervous wreck. I would say I don’t want to get my hopes up, but to quote one of my favorite lines from Monk “That’s what hopes are for.”