Hearing Aids to Come

Here is what we know at this point:

• O is growing well.  He continues to drink Mommy's milk thickened with some rice cereal. 
• O is a social little one and loves smiling faces.  
• The sleep situation in the home is slowly starting to improve.  We're hopeful to rid ourselves of the apnea monitor very soon, which should help. O has not had any breathing difficulties.
• O will need a hearing aid for the next few years (at minimum).  He will see the audiologist sometime in the coming weeks to receive this.  He'll need a special conduction type of hearing aid.  (His hearing loss appears to be mostly conductive in nature due to very small external ear canals.)

O had another appointment with his ENT doc today.   O had a CT scan to look more closely at the structures in his ears.  His inner ear parts are all present and accounted for.  This brings hope that his hearing will be relatively normal with the assistance of a hearing aid and that one day in 5-6 years, he'll be a candidate for surgery to correct the small ear canals.  Right now, he's too little for that type of undertaking.

We look forward to seeing how O responds to noises once he's wearing the hearing aid.  He clearly hears some sounds without an aid.  For instance, when he is crying he definitely calms if you sing into his ear like it's a microphone.    The volume at which his brother speaks (or whines) at times presents a minor dilemma: When is it OK to turn the hearing aid off so that big bro won't wake O up (or prevent him from going to sleep)?  We'll have to ask the audiologist for advice on that one.   It's been sorta nice to not have sounds interfere with baby-sleep.