Countdown to Sound!

Since Landri's surgery last month many people have asked us...."so can she hear?".  Not yet!  The University of Iowa Hospital waits one month from surgery to turn on the implant to allow for healing of the incision sight and the swelling to go down.  We have been counting down the days!  Landri's implant will be activated on November 23rd - 3 days before her first birthday!  We are very excited!  At this appointment they will give us the external pieces that Landri will wear to make her implant work.  They turn the implant on slowly over a series of appointments called mappings.  Landri's brain has never heard sound so the audiologists will slowly increase the sounds she hears over a series of appointments.  We have been told that at the first appointment she will likely not respond to much until her brain starts to make sense of the new sound. It is similar to how a newborn tunes most everything out because nothing makes sense at first.  We are so excited for this journey to begin!

Please click on this link for a super short and simple video explaining how the implant works.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmNpP2fr57A

Landri's implant will look like this.  It is the new Cochlear Nucleus 5 sound processor.  She will be the first child at the University of Iowa with this new technology.  We ordered one white and one chocolate brown with fashionable pink covers of course!  Cochlear Implants are not a cure for deafness.  When Landri has this on she will have access to sound.  When it is off - when she is swimming, bathing, sleeping  - she will still be completely deaf and hear nothing. 

Through this journey we have had the honor of meeting some wonderful and brilliant families.  We have been able to share with them their "activation victories" and watch videos of the children saying their first words.  I want to share some of these videos on my blog to give us all inspiration.   Since I am still a newbie blogger I first need to figure out how to upload the video files.  Give me a few days!  Seriously.....there are days when the whole thing seems surreal that we have a deaf child.  Then in the same thought it seems completely insane that with the wonders of technology our completely deaf child will have access to sound.  I can hardly wrap my mind around it at times.  We sort of start to lose touch of what it is like to have a hearing one year old around.  We are so used to getting right in front of Landri to get her attention, using our hands and gesturing, and working so hard to get her attention so that she is part of everything that is going on.  I am excited for her to share in the laughter of our family, hear her sister sing the songs that she has made up just for her (Halle made her a song about a cat and porkchop - need I say more - it's a must hear!), and even to get woke up by the barking dogs.  It all makes my heart smile.  Sooo....start the countdown and we will keep you posted!