Molly announces the arrival of her baby brother, Stephen Michael. Stephen was born on Tuesday November 20th. Molly is very proud to be the big sister. She adores him!

Could this be another reason why we are saving Molly's second ear for new technology??? Check out this new research on how to simulate hearing via infrared laser radiation. Will be pretty wild to see what's next.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19206/page1/

It has been a fall of celebrations! Molly turned TWO in early September and last Friday marked a year of being implanted. I’m not exactly sure where this year went. We must have been on over-drive with all the changes that were taking place in Molly’s life. She is now such a big girl and full of life. Busy, Busy, Busy and into everything like a normal 2 yr old. Plus she continues to test us each day with her strong will.

Molly has finally realized that it is far more exciting to have mom/dad read to her than to sit and look at books alone. This is a good thing for me now that I am in my 8th month of pregnancy. I know that reading will help expand her auditory memory.

She has recently been very interested in colors, shapes, letters and numbers. Seems age appropriate, huh? She can say yellow, green and pink (not perfectly) and has a sound (not quite identifiable) for most of the other colors. We were taking Molly up to bed the other night and I was saying "A B C D" and Molly followed by saying "E F G". We were both stunned! Guess we don’t realize all that she is taking in and remembering. Repetition is paying off!

New phase in Molly's world:
~She has finally decided to say " yeah" as her answer to all of our yes/no questions. Seems hypocritical to correct her with a "yes" when we find ourselves saying "yeah" all the time.
~When we ask her "what does a cow (or any animal) say?", she immediately responds with the appropriate animal noise. Great way to get her to talk in public.
~Molly jabbers on and on to herself, to her toys and to us (with all kinds of hand movements and facial expressions). Makes perfect sense to her, but we can barely make out any of the words. Seems like a great foundation to building sentences.

Last week I met a mom with a one year old recently diagnosed with deafness . We were in the audiology waiting room and they were waiting to have him fitted with hearing aids. I was reminded of the constant battle of trying to keep the aids in Molly's ears, not to mention a gentle dose of her prior screaming. I dug up this video clip of Molly at 7 months. This is for you Jennifer!!! :)

Well, it’s about time I give an update to the few of you who are still checking on this blog.
I must say that Molly has come a long way in these last 3 months of not posting. We were struggling for months to get Molly to do what her speech therapist wanted her to do at home. We focused so hard on getting Molly to be attentive and listen during home therapy. I guess we began to wonder if Molly was getting enough input in her "ear" or if it was just her strong will. She does choose to do things on HER TIME. Finally, Molly had a mapping session in early May and her audiologist upped her levels significantly. This has made all the difference in the world for her. She has grown by leaps and bounds in expressive and receptive language since then.

Molly will directly imitate vowel and consonant sounds, as well as combination sounds. She has recently imitated the letters "T", "S", "P" and "K". She may not have heard these sounds prior to the mapping. Molly is now saying 7 full words and over 75 sounds/sound combinations for specific words. Her receptive language is obviously greater than this. She will respond accordingly to many commands, without visuals (from up close to across the room). Go upstairs, sit down, brush your teeth, sit on the potty, stop, throw the ball, jump, dance, pick that up, throw it in the trash, etc.... It has been a tremendous encouragement to us to see such progress. Reminds us of how blessed Molly is to have the opportunity to hear. We praise God!

Most mornings after breakfast we do what I call organized therapy in Molly’s "listening chair". When I put her in the booster seat at the table, Molly knows that she has to listen. Some days I get 5-10 minutes out of her. I don’t push it! Each week we have a lesson to follow from her speech therapist . Sometimes it is accomplished in the chair, but most of the time it is done while she is playing.
There are some kiddos who react to sound quickly. Molly is not always like this. Which makes me wonder often if her device is working properly. We are realizing that Molly is more of a "thinker". She is always busy doing many things and looks like she is not listening, but she will respond appropriately in her time. Seems really silly that we are figuring out her "learning style" at 18 mos. Guess a lot of this seems silly to all of you who are reading this!
As far as receptive/expressive language.... Molly says Hi to everyone and everything. She can identify the nose, eyes and ears on people, animals, toys, etc... She says "oh" for nose, "eyeeeee" for eye, and "eeah" for ear. She is saying "aaa eee" for Daddy and "ma eee" for Molly. Right now she seems to be obsessed with birds, which she calls "er". We bird watch out the back window each day.

Molly's cousin from Texas came to visit this past week. As seen in the photo above, the girls are bundled up for a cold day at the park.

Where do I even begin??? It is so exciting to look back over these last three months of activation and see results. Kids are little sponges. They absorb more than we think they do. With an implanted kid, you have no idea what sounds they are taking in until they spit them out.
Last night I wrote down all the sounds/words that Molly understands or at least seems to understand. To my surprise I came up with about 25. She is saying 15+ sounds for specific words. It has been so cool to see Molly’s unbelievable desire to communicate.

She is quite obsessed with "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". If I start to sing the song, without visuals, she will do most of the motions. On occasion, I find her in her highchair or carseat doing the motions and "singing" along. You know, I was singing this to her ad nauseam for the first 2 months and she showed zero interest. I took her to storytime at the library and she saw the librarian and kids singing/doing the motions and she decided it was pretty cool. Go figure!

Here is a picture of our little singer in her rocking chair.

Molly has been making some progress with her vocabulary and word recognition. We did have a few setbacks in December because of sickness and traveling. There were days where she refused to keep her external device on (constant battle with mommy). There were days where she did not babble/talk at all. This was probably due to not feeling well, out of her environment or too much background noise. I assume all of this is very typical.

Lately she has been saying "ah, ah" for up, "own" for down and "baaa" (southern drawl) for bye. She will turn to her name and "no". When we say "no"(without visuals), from across the room, she will stop and wag her finger at the object she is not allowed to touch. Silly kid!

Speaking of silly....Here is Molly playing dress-up with her cousins on New Years Day. Still Bossy!

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.