I plopped Peter on the floor this morning, with me behind him a little bit, and he sat up by himself....for a minute...before slowly folding over onto his legs (gotta love that baby flexibility!). Hooray for PJ! He is growing up so fast, and if my bathroom scale is telling the truth he has more than doubled his birthweight (considering he was born at 9 lbs, that's a lot to double ;)).
All this growing brings the reality of a Cochlear Implant surgery date closer. It's both thrilling and terrifying to think that in six months my litte guy could have bionic ears, but that there is a big surgery between us and that bionic future.
We met with the ENT a little bit ago, and she said she would order genetic tests anytime we wanted to do them, but that there was no requirement for CI candidacy, and no rush. They just require a blood draw, but maybe we'll wait, and just do them the same time we do the CI. We aren't going to have any more kids, but if my husband and I are both carriers of a known hearing gene mutation, our daughters might be also. And we could rule out Ushers, hopefully! In any case the ENT said Peter did not present with any syndrome symptoms, so she wasn't worried.
The ENT also said that she could do simultaneous implants, or do the two surgeries fairly close together - maybe three months apart. I recently read of a protocol where the hospital did them 4-6 weeks apart! That hospital also did the surgeries at about 10 months, so those kids could be hearing binaurally by one year of age! I didn't ask the ENT about doing surgeries that close together. I figure it would be better just to get through it once if you are going to do them so close together! Plus Peter will be closer to 12 months, and as a big, healthy baby I think he would do well with just one longer surgery. And the decision is still a ways off, since she said they schedule surgeries about two months out, so January is when we have to make the call. But it gets closer every day!
Other exciting things coming up: a tour of a local oral deaf school, and the local state School for the Deaf. I am so lucky that two great schools are within an hour of my house. I'll know more about their programs in a couple weeks! Also, Peter's first sound booth test, and his 6-month checkup are both happening this month :)
Go Peter! The six month mark is so exciting - especially the first sound booth test. That test really helps to give more solid answers because they're a little older, and you can watch their reactions to sounds. It gave me a much clearer picture than that ABR at six weeks old! Keep thinking - every day you're a little bit closer!
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