Hi guys!  I finally figured out how to enable the "comment" feature in this blog, so if anyone would like to post any comments, please feel free to share your thoughts with your fellow Dorian & Wynn groupies :)  Thanks for all your well wishes and positive thoughts!

Today Wynn had his 3rd hearing test.  It was a fully sedated test where after he feel asleep from the anesthesia, they connected a variety of probes across his head, and sensors within his ears.  For an hour while he slept they did a variety of different sounds/pitches on the machine and measured his brainwaves and ear drum movements in response to the sounds.  Unfortunately, Wynn's ear drums and brain waves showed that he is unresponsive to a wide variety of sound pitches and volumes.  

I told the audiologist I wasn't sure that was accurate because he coos and "talks" with us all the time, and is very responsive to our voices when we walk into rooms, etc.  But she told me that he is overcompensating with his other senses.  So when we talk to him, he is responding to our facial expressions.  If we walk into the room, he is responding to our movement.  And if we whisper to him, he isn't responding to the whispered voice, he is responding to our warm breath that he feels in his ear.   That just makes me want to hug and squeeze him even more!   He is so smart!  

She gave me a chart that plots out what his hearing ability is.  Examples of what he can't hear would be the humming of the refrigerator, high pitched voices, birds chirping, "inside voice" conversations.  What can he hear?  Really loud talking, crickets in his room (I guess if biblical infestations happened to hit our home), vacuum cleaner, motorcycles, headphone music with volume cranked all the way up, etc.  But please... if you come to visit us, please don't yell at him (!!).   Just because he can't hear you doesn't mean he isn't bonding or understanding you.   He is our little social butterfly and he'll talk your ear off, even if he can't hear his own self.  He loves to talk.   Kinda reminds me of Alex.  

So we will be getting him a hearing aid as soon as the results are shared with our pediatrician and our metabolic specialist.  The sooner we get him his hearing aid, the better chance we'll have at not interrupting his ability to learn how to speak at this very crucial time of speech development.  The results will also be shared with ECI (the early childhood intervention folks that come out and do physical and cognitive development therapy twice a month).  Now that he is officially hearing impaired, ECI will also have someone come out and do auditory therapy as well.  So I'm glad we found this early enough to do some proactive intervention.  There's no doubt that Wynn will make his hearing aid look cute as can be.  For Halloween I'll just dress him up like a mini-secret service agent in a dark suit.  Problem solved!  :-)