Jonica - Audiology 1

Wednesday 13th October 2010 - today was Jonica's first audiology appointment, having been referred following the hearing screens in hospital after she was born. Mum came with me which was nice, and took some photos...i'll see if i can post some so you can see what goes on during these tests.

Jonica was a good girl and slept beautifully for the entire test, so we got lots of good information. We still have to go back to complete the testing, but we got a really good idea of what we're dealing with.

I went into today preparing for the worst. We knew that we had to go into a third pregnancy prepared to have another hearing impaired baby, worst-case a profoundly deaf child, and both Keith & I had noticed that Jonica really didn't respond or startle to much. I think we had each coughed or sneezed while holding her and she hadn't jumped at all, so I was beginning to wonder if she had much hearing at all. I was doing alright until about half-way along the bus trip into town - then the anxiety of the unknown began to set in. What if she was profoundly deaf and needed cochlear implants? How much was she really hearing now, if anything? Suddenly those possibilities stared me straight in the face, and i'm thankful for the prayers of my friends for strength in that time.

Our audiologist turned out to be the same one who diagnosed Jarrah's loss 3 years ago! It was nice to see her again, although not under ideal circumstances...Jonica was already sound asleep so we got straight into testing. We completed click tests (air conduction, via a little headphone) on both sides, bone conduction on both sides (which bypasses the middle ear structures and passes sound straight to the cochlear via the skull), began some Tone Burst testing on the left side (testing different frequencies, high & mid & low sounds) and tympanometry (movement of the eardrum & middle ear pressure). These results form part of the picture, the rest will be completed at a future appointment.

It appears that Jonica has a mild-moderate loss bilaterally (both ears), which is *way* better than i was expecting. I'll post her complete results once we have them, but initial indications seem to be a sloping mild-moderate loss, between 40-60db. This is actually not quite as severe as Jarrah & Kaelen, and in my mind a cause for celebration! It seems she has quite a lot of residual hearing so she *should* actually be hearing quite a bit of what's going on. Such a sense of relief in not having to consider surgery for implants; it actually put a smile on my face to know that it seems her road will hopefully not be as hard as her brothers'... The tympanometry test showed good movement of her eardrums & no apparent blockages either in her middle ear or Eustachian tube, so these seems to be fairly reliable results.

After 1.5hrs of clicks and sitting extremely still, we were done for the day. Results will be finalised at the next appointment, although given the bone conduction results gained today we will be referred to Australian Hearing immediately. And we'll need to go see our trusty ENT again as he needs to give the OK for Jonica to be fitted with hearing aids. We signed forms at Yeerongpilly yesterday to begin Jonica's enrolment in the early intervention programme as we didn't expect today's results to contradict the newborn screens - she'll begin her sessions in 2011.

Here we go again...another bunch of extra appointments, but hopefully nothing we haven't done before...

Next appt: Thurs 21st Oct, Jonica's Audiology follow-up

Welcome, Jonica Arwyn!

OK, i'm a bit late with this...i've been busy!

On Thursday 30th Sept 2010, at 9:37am after only 5hrs of labour, we welcomed Jonica Arwyn Harbottle into our family. She weighed 3.69kg (8pd 3oz), was 49cm long and cried nicely very soon after birth :-)

We were visited by the Paediatric cardiologist that same evening, who took Jonica off to do an echo/ultrasound to check her heart situation. His words upon their return were, "Well, there's good news and good news!" Apparently he was entirely happy with what he saw, so happy that he didn't feel any follow-up was necessary. Hooray! One less complication!

On Friday we were visited by Healthy Hearing for a hearing screen. I was very up-front about my expectations for the test, ie. that i didn't expect Jonica to pass, and i think that surprised the Healthy Hearing person a bit. She in fact didn't pass the screen (called "Refer", cos it doesn't guarantee a problem) so a repeat test was scheduled for Sunday morning prior to discharge.

Sunday morning rolled around and the hearing screen was repeated. Jonica again didn't pass the screen, so we've been referred to Audiology and are waiting for call to arrange an appointment for a more in-depth test. I'll post about that test separately...

In the meantime, Jonica is doing very well - surpassed her birthweight by 7 days old and sleeps like a champion, even with 2 noisy brothers running up and down the hallway outside her room :-)