Natalie said her FIRST WORD today! "MAMA" --- thatta girl! She has been saying "mmm" and "aah" for awhile now. Then the last few weeks I could hear her saying "ma"at times and I knew she was getting close. Today we were skyping with Nana and sure enough, she said "mama" several times. It was pretty awesome! It is the start of something beautiful that I had taken for granted with my other kids, and that is normal speech and language. It is not until you don't have something that you realize how important it is. Both of my other kids were starting to talk very well at 16 months. Natalie is just 2 months shy of that and although will be well behind what they were at that age, I think she is doing very well considering only hearing for 3 1/2 months.
She continues to make great progress. I am amazed at her every day. She was born profoundly deaf and so for 10+ months everything was just silence for her and there was so much she missed out on. And although it has only been 3 1/2 months of hearing, it feels like she has had her cochlear implants for a very long time.
AND, of that past 3+ months of hearing, I have to also realize how many hours that really is. So, she has been hearing for 110 days, and factoring in all her sleep: bedtime 7 pm - 7 am, 2 naps a day that are 2 hours each, she is really only awake for 8 hours a day. Plus, any time we are running errands in the car, she typically will take off her processors at some point. But I would say on average she is listening for a good 8 hours each day. Look how far she has come! So once she drops that morning nap and starts having less sleep each day, she will make even greater strides.
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| Auditory-Verbal Therapy with her teacher Jenni |
We try to get in a lot of books with Natalie. The goal is 10 books a day which we are pretty good at. most of the time. She loves to flip through books and seems to really enjoy them. I have been trying to teach her the elephant sound when we flip to pictures of elephants. I think just doing this repetitively for several weeks she caught on very fast. When we come to the page, I just make and elephant sound and lift my arm in the air like an elephant would do with its trunk. This video isn't the best of her doing this but glad I got it on camera.
2 comments:
Amazing that Natalie has said her first word i can imagine that brought some tears to your eyes!! Im following your blog and its bringing me hope as my daughter is getting implants 1st July and i so keen to join her on her hearing journey!! Keep posting and well done on all the hard work
Tercia, UK
Hi,
I normally don't post anything but decided to when I read your blog. Our son Nicholas was 9 months old when he was implanted, he just turned 5 in March. He is only implanted on one ear at the moment. What I wanted to share was he just graduated pre K and is going into a general education kindergarten class in September. He did not qualify for speech thru the school as he tested so high ( 75% higher than hearing children his own age!) I guess I just wanted to let you know for us the journey seemed so long when it began yet each day gets better.He is an amazing little boy who captures hearts daily, LOL. Best wishes to you and your family! Natalie is precious. Enjoy!
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