I am thankful for all of you who give me the gentle nudge to keep on posting.

Last week Molly started to babble like crazy (like a normal hearing 7 month old would). "YaYa", "rarar", "EEEE" are some of the sounds she will make all day. She will say "Mooo" for cow, "Maw" for cat, "hooohooo" for train, high pitch "wa, wa" for dog, "ah" for up and "baa" for sheep. She will mimic duration, pitch and volume changes to a lot of these sounds. All of this output with only 6 weeks of activation.

Music.....Molly LOVES music. Her eyes light up when we turn on the jukebox in her room. She will dance and attempt to hum along. All of her toys that make music are played over and over now. Thankfully batteries have a short life :). This attached photo is of Molly and her friend Ben at music class. Can you tell who the bossy one might be?

The Audiologist did a sound field audiogram on Wednesday. We were both enthusiastic to see her responses to such soft sounds. All of you in Tennessee would be happy to know that her speech detection threshold was clearly obtained in the normal hearing range (10 dB).

Since turn-on day we have seen a tremendous amount of progress in our little kiddo. We still can’t quite get over the fact that she can hear now. It is a 21st century miracle. Yes, we are flying high!!! Molly actually wants to hear. Occasionally in the morning or after nap she will point to her ear before I have a chance to get her device on. She wants to hear right away! That is so cool to see so early on!

We have already had two speech therapy sessions (an hour once a week). We chose to take the Auditory-Verbal approach. Seems to be a very aggressive yet effective approach. Essentially the AV practice teaches kiddos how to hear, listen, understand the language of their normal hearing parents, and how to effectively speak that same language. It emphasizes hearing rather than vision (no sign or cued speech).

We love our therapist. She is a phenomenal teacher and very creative. Much of this therapy is parent training, of course. So I take what I learn from each session and implement it into everyday practice. Or at least try! The trick is to disguise the work at home as play. After all, she is an infant!!!!

Ok, so I am doing a pretty lousy job with posting. Thought I would tell you a little bit about Molly’s activation session as well as how she has responded in this last week.

On activation day, Molly had a positive report from her Audiologist. She started out by sending signals to the implant and gradually raised the volume. There were some slight responses at first. She then started sending low tones to high tones, like a piano scale. Molly actually cried when she hit the high tones. Tears of joy for us!!! She then turned her "ear" on to live sound and Molly seemed to respond to a few things in the environment. All of our waiting for this big day was well rewarded.

As far as how Molly is taking to her new "EAR".....She is a NEW KID (at least in the last couple days). What happened to our little screamer??? We were seeing a little reaction to loud sounds in the first couple days, but nothing like yesterday and today. She has found that all of her toys that make sound have a whole new dimension to them. She wants interactive play now (in the last couple months she has been playing quietly by herself). For those of you who know Molly, you know that she has quite a loud and frequent scream (especially in public). Yesterday was my first grocery shopping experience with a quiet child. Let’s see how long this will last. :)

I should also note that she is taking to this device far better than she ever did with her hearing aids. We are assuming it is because she is getting more input and LIKES what she is hearing. She yanks the device out though when she wants our attention. Hummm..... Still naughty!!!!


There are three parts to her external device. What is hooked the the halter on her back is the body-worn processor.

Molly is now wearing her new Nucleus Freedom device. She is actually alerting to sound in the pic. Pretty Cool!! The coil portion is magnetized to the head where she has been implanted. The pink portion, which SHOULD go BTE (behind the ear), is the microphone. She also wears a processor that we attach to her pants. I will send a better photo later.
Here is our little Squirt from Finding Nemo

A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN

I seem to be having some trouble uploading pics on Blogger tonight.

We took Molly to her Audiologist to be activated this afternoon. What a cool day it was!!!! I will write more later, but the visit was extremely encouraging. She responded very well to different sounds. It looks like the implant is working!!!! Praise the Lord!

Six days to go until Halloween, turn-on day. Um, let’s just say we’re a little excited!!!
As you can see in the picture, Molly’s scar is healing beautifully. Now that most of the swelling is gone, you can see and feel the very defined implant beneath the skin.


Would love to share yet another LINK /video clip with you. ABC’s "Good Morning America" covered a remarkable and touching story about the McBride family, which some of you may have seen in May 06. All four family members are deaf and can hear with the aid of a cochlear implant. Recently, three of them were bilaterally implanted. Just thought this would be helpful in seeing not only what the external device looks like, but also how each family member is progressing in speech/ language. Amazing!

Our Bionic Baby

Molly is blessed to be implanted in a time of such advancing technology. Over 60,000 people in the world have been implanted. The FDA began to approve implantation in adults in the mid-80's and extended it to children in the 90's.

The very primitive devices had 1 channel. Multiple channel devices were introduced in the 80's which helped greatly with speech recognition. I’m not certain, but I believe that Molly’s device has 22 channels. We will learn more about the device in the next few months. Huge learning curve! I tell you all of this because I want to share a couple websites with you. Both sites have audio demos that simulate what speech/music would sound like through a cochlear implant. Audio Demo1 , Audio Demo2






Molly testing out her healed head wound.

Kids are unbelievably resilient! It is day 5, post-surgery and Molly is definitely back to her usual self. She had discomfort in her left ear and around the incision for a couple days. The area around the incision has had minimal swelling and bruising, however that ear has been swollen enough to stick out. If you would like to see her incision and partial mohawk, click here. Mike was VERY pleased with the surgeon’s work, but it made me a bit queasy to look at and touch (keeping it moist with vaseline).

A number of people have asked us if she is able to hear now. So I guess I should explain a little bit about how the process works. The small device that was implanted is simply the "rewiring" to her hearing nerve. It replaces the structures she was born with that don’t work. After the surgery site heals (typically 3-4 weeks), the external device (which includes a microphone and sound processor) is attached at our follow-up visit with her Audiologist. I’ll also explain that the sound that goes into the microphone is converted, in the processor, to digital sound/coded signals that are transmitted through the implant to her hearing nerve. Yes, Pretty AMAZING!

The events of October 5, 2006 proved to be better than expected. Everything about the day was clearly orchestrated by God’s gracious hand. We were very pleased with the personnel at the hospital. They made us feel quite comfortable and they responded well to all of Molly’s needs. Molly's surgeon said that things couldn't have gone better.
In case you are interested in reading about the implant procedure or want to see a diagram, click here.

Here’s a run down of the last two days:
10-5-06
6:30 am- arrival at hospital
7:15 am- Molly taken to surgery/Parents went to waiting room
10:40 am- Reunited in the recovery room
11:30 am- Discharged home
7:00 pm- Down for bed (with a little codeine)
10-6-06
7:00 am- Molly woke up in her usual form
6:00 pm- bandage off


Here is our "wounded soldier", as daddy likes to call her, at breakfast this morning. Her face looked a little puffy from the dressing.

THE BIG DAY
We give all the praise and glory to God!!!!
Thank you for all of your prayers. All went well today. I will write more tomorrow. It has been a long day. Thought I would post a pic of Molly pre-op and post-op.

Molly waves good-bye to her parents before she is taken into the operating room.

A little groggy after anesthesia

Guess I should give a little background on Molly and our journey this past year before we jump to the implant stuff. I will try to leave out the details and give you the facts. Molly was born a year ago in September 05. She failed her newborn hearing screen in the hospital and we were referred to the Audiologist/ENT for further testing. At three months, the Audiologist did an Auditory Brainstem Response test with results that showed Molly to have a severe-profound hearing loss in both ears. Oye, what do you do with that information as a parent? I’m not even sure if I could explain to you all of our thoughts and emotions at that point. We were grateful for the prayers of many and were comforted in our reassurance that God is in control.

Thankfully our town of Johnson City, TN has incredible early intervention services (incredible individuals who worked with Molly). They gave us the information we needed to make some crucial decisions for Molly and brought us much HOPE for her future in the hearing world. Because of their help, Molly was fitted with hearing aids at 4 ½ months. With the aids, she was responding inconsistently to loud environmental sounds. I should mention that it was quite a battle to keep her aids in her ears (she thought they were better suited in her mouth). Anyway, she was weekly being seen by the PhD/graduate Audiology and Speech Pathology students at ETSU. We were seeing quite a bit of progress as time went on. At 10 months she was mimicking the syllables/pitches of some words, but still not mimicking vowel/consonant sounds (other than Aaaa and MaMa). The input given by the aids was still not enough for speech and language development, so we began to move forward with the cochlear implant. We met with the implant team at UVa and they confirmed that Molly was a good candidate for the implant. When Molly was 11 months, we left the Volunteer state and moved to the Cavalier state of VA. So here we are at 13 months, gearing up for surgery on Thursday and her activation on Halloween.

We are new to the blog scene. Let's see how faithful I am in posting. Ha!
So we're 5 days away from Molly's surgery. Excited, but a bit nervous to have our baby go under the knife. We will TRY to quarantine Molly from any illness in these next few days. This is all in God's control though!