Reviewing videos of Matt as a baby, one thing that hits you is how quiet he is. Oh, he laughed - loved to hear him giggle. His screaming was loud enough for our neighbors to hear his unhappiness.
He could make noise but he hardly babbled, cooed, garbled or made any of the beginning language sounds with which most babies address their world.
In the midst of our day to day life with him, we never noticed just how quiet he was. His doctor did notice though and sent us to see an audiologist.
Matt screamed as if the earphones were on fire when the audiologist attempted to put them on his head. Plan B - we were sent to a dimly lit room. In two corners were glass cases each in which housed a large stuffed animal. One was a monkey with cymbals and one an elephant.
The doctor had me hold Matt in my lap. He showed us how the monkey and elephant each made noise. He explained that he would be in the other room watching Matt's reactions to the noises. He asked me to not respond to the noises, to just sit still and look straight ahead so that I would not influence Matt by my reaction.
The doctor left the room. When the first animal started to make noise, Matt pressed himself into me and started to tremble. When either animal made a noise, Matt pressed back against me harder.
After a number of attempts to have Matt look at the animals as they made noise, the doctor returned to the room. He was concerned by Matt's lack of response to the noises. The doctor scheduled Matt to have a sedated auditory brainstem response (ABR) test.
Auditory brain stem response testing is a painless and harmless test involving the measurement of electric responses recorded from the hearing nerves and brain by means of small, disk-like electrodes taped behind each ear and on the forehead. Matt was whisked off for his testing while Chris and I waited. I know that my stomach churned and burned while I clutched Chris' hand and awaited the results.
The audiologist joined us in the waiting room after he completed the test. He told us that at the start of the test he was prepared to discover the extent of Matt's hearing loss. Never in his years of practice had he been proven so wrong. Not only did Matt NOT have any hearing loss, he hears better than most people.
Elation and relief swept through me. Where I had feared I had a baby with a hearing loss, I now knew I had a baby with bat hearing. Over the years, we have found that having extremely acute hearing can be painful for Matt, but on that day, I was filled with relief that we had escaped one challenge on our journey with Matt.
The audiologist referred us to a speech therapist. We still needed to discover why our little guy was such a quiet child.
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