More History

One year after Price and Sophie received their first set of tubes it was time to go back for our yearly check up. I did not think Price (now 3) was not speaking clearly enough for his age and I along with other family memebers still didn't think he was hearing well. Sophie (now 1yr and 3 months old) was not saying MaMa or DaDa, or any of the normal baby words that my other two children spoke at that age. She had also started developing a couple of ear infections in the last couple of months preceeding this visit. So all in all I brought all of this info in with me to the yearly visit with the ENT. He looked in Prices ears and said they look great! Tubes had fallen out and no fluid that he could see. Sophie's early looked a little irritated along with fluid buildup in each ear. I then demanded Price have a hearing screening because I was not satisfied with "his ears LOOK great." Sophie again was ordered to have tubes reinserted in her ears for the fluid. Price failed another OAE in both the left and right ear. And we were FINALLY referred to the Woman's Wellness Center for Price to have a sedated ABR. I had NEVER heard of an ABR before this day. I also learned this test could have been done 3 years ago but no one had ever mentioned this to me. In May 2008 Price faild his first ABR and two weeks later Sophie did too. How devestating this was to hear. I never thought in a million years my children would have something like sensoryneural hearing loss. Price was not responding to anything below 45-55 dbl. And Sophie was not responding to anything below 90 dbl. I asked myself "how could I have missed this?" Why did I not catch this sooner? What happend? Sophie had acquired other ways of communicating with us, thru grunts, gestures, babbling. She also would respond sometimes to her name, she was even repeating some words. Come to find out these are words that were spoken loudly; for example "Andrew" or "aaaachooo" when I would yell ""Andrew" from the back of the house she would sometimes repeat that. So it would reassure me that 'oh she heard me say that.' Price's speach was very fast and only we could make out was he was saing. He was talking a whole lot but 70 % of the time we really didn't understand what he was saying. So again I knew he could hear but I knew deep down that he was still missing some. I do blame myself for the late diagnosis sometimes but I told the pediatrician and ENT that I thought there was something wrong on a couple of different occasions. So should I point the finger or go with the flow? I did write letters to those I felt needed to know my concerns and now it is time to get on board with their new diagnosis' and do what I can to help my babies.