Strike, how can a kid grow so much?!?

Well i thought Kaelen was looking bigger (especially longer), and some of the mums at MOPS yesterday commented that he looked bigger, but this morning we went to child health and found out just How MUCH! :-)

It seems that in the last 4 weeks Kaelen has put on nearly 1 whole kilogram (!) and grown about 5cm in length!! My goodness boy, are you thinking NBA already?!? Perhaps he was just doing some catching up (and stashing a bit away for Ron...), but to me that seems an astronomical amount to grow in 4 weeks. At least we know what he's been doing with all the milk he's been drinking...

Thinking of starting solids next week, really only so we can offer him a wide variety of tastes and flavours before he gets too set in his ways at the ripe old age of 6 months, as i've heard of happening. Perhaps he'll actually have some need for them by then too...

On the hearing front, Kaelen has begun to respond very clearly to voices in the last 7-10 days. He has always responded well to noise-makers such as rattles & cymbals & cellophane (a favourite!), but about 10 days ago at his speech lesson he decided that he liked "meow" very much, and would grin from ear to ear upon every repetition. During last week this reaction gradually spread to other sounds, "moo", "quack quack" (especially from Daddy!), "woof woof" & other animal sounds. This is a great sign, cos it shows he's really beginning to tune in to voices, which is critical for developing speech. He even responded to a few things without his hearing aids, so there's obviously enough residual hearing there that he still gets some input without his technology. According to his speech teacher, we should expect him to develop age-appropriately; because he got his aids so early, he really hasn't missed much at all.

Which comes first - the chicken or the egg?

Or, in this case, the teeth or the ears?

Since my last entry, Jarrah's ears have continued to discharge, alternating sides of course - and then i discovered he had a new tooth! His first 2-yr-old molar! That was prob about 2 weeks ago, and followed a few days of runny nose in addition to ear discharge. Then, last week, about when the discharge swapped sides, i discovered a second 2-yr-old molar.

So, which comes first - the teeth or the ears?

Now i'm not sure if the ear discharge is related to or even caused by the teeth, or if the timing was just unhappy co-incidence. I also don't know if the runny nose was caused by either the teeth or the ears, or how about both...it's all a mystery. What i do know is that he's hearing spectacularly at the moment, so any discharge that is there doesn't appear to be bothering him too much...

Children are complicated sometimes... :-)

Easier said than done...

Did i say something last post like, "if we can just keep Jarrah's ears healthy..."?

Well, it seems this is easier said than done.

Tomorrow is 7 days since that last test. Tomorrow will be day 3 of our next round of drops due to discharge from his right ear. And, i must confess, we didn't get on the drops right away, we waited a day or two for things to present themselves clearly.

How can this be?

How can a child go from having clear, apparently healthy ears on day 1, to having lots of odourous discharge (thus preventing the wearing of a certain hearing aid) in less than 7 days, probably closer to 3 days? With no obvious catalyst or other illness? This is verging on ridiculous.

Despite all this, Jarrah did very well at speech today with only one ear in - detected all 7 Ling sounds and listened very well to instructions...you could see his little brain processing the contents of the sentence backwards, it was fascinating! Apparently kids who are cochlear candidates don't detect all 7 Ling sounds, so that's encouraging that he can do that with only 1 hearing aid and who-knows-how-little-hearing in the other ear - and it confirms the opinions and decisions that have been offered and made so far.

*Sigh*, off to make my chemist richer than he already was...

Jarrah - Aus Hearing checkup

Tues, 4th Nov - Well, the good news keeps on coming! It's been a long time coming, but at least it's coming! Grab it, with both hands, and don't ever, ever let go!

Today was another routine check-up at Australian Hearing for Jarrah. They've been happening every 3 months because his levels have been fluctuating so much, so he's starting to get a little bored of the puppet game. The VROA (Visual Reinforcement Orientation Audiometry) is where they put little pipes in his ears, play sounds at various frequencies and levels through the pipes, and when he responds by turning to the sound he's "rewarded" by something visual, usually a puppet lit up in a box, hence my term "puppet test". The plan for today was to try a different method of testing, designed for slightly older children, but because of the work he's been doing at Yeerongpilly it was considered that he should cope fine. Unfortunately our regular audiologist was not at today's appointment, so that different method of testing was not used, even though i mentioned that it had been discussed and approved at our last appointment.

Nevermind, we had another go with the puppets. Ears were checked and clear, grommets were in place and open, and Jarrah had slept reasonably well last night so he was in a very good frame of mind for testing, thankfully! The priority was to get clear results on the right ear, since we hadn't had any decent results from that ear since January, so they began with that side. I can usually hear some of the tones as the test goes by, but today i heard very little...which made me wonder whether they were testing much, or if Jarrah was hearing well. But then, i could see when it was a response because they showed the puppet!

Jarrah lost interest part-way through testing the left ear, but the results they did get were not different from the previous test, so they were deemed accurate. What we did get was this:

Right ear:

250Hz - 75db (previously 70db, so within margin of error)

500Hz - 70db (previously 70 or 75db, so within margin of error)

1kHz - 60db (previously 85-90db, so significantly improved!!)

2kHz - 70db (previously 65db, so within margin of error)

4kHz - 60db (previously 105db, so significantly improved!!)

Left ear:

1kHz - 75db (previously 70-75db, so within margin of error)

4kHz - 80-85db (previously 90-105db, so some improvement)

These are virtually the same results as Jarrah returned at the test immediately after he was fitted with hearing aids nearly 12 months ago, in fact the left ear 4kHz result is actually slightly better.

HOORAY!!

This for me confirms the decision of the Mater Implant audiologist who was of the opinion that Jarrah was not in need of cochlear implants, and tells me that most of the fluctuations we've seen throughout 2008 have been due to middle ear conditions. Therefore, if we can keep J's middle ears healthy (ie. infection-free), then with his hearing aids he should do just fine.

By the way, he's trying to say lots of words like "eggshell" and "truck" and "clock" these days, and his favourite song atm is "Bananas In Pajamas", which kind of sounds like "naa ni ni, naa ni ni, aaaaah naa ni ni, naa ni ni..." I must confess it took me a few days to figure out which song that was... :-)

Next appt: Fri 5th Dec, Kaelen's Aus Hearing check-up