April – May
During the past month Denise has become very lively. She started crawling on 11 May, and gained a sixth tooth!
I noticed that Denise has blue bruises on her ears, and soon found out why. When she falls, she often falls on her ear, which then exerts pressure against the hearing aid, causing a small blue spot.
Advertisement
She is not yet all that stable when crawling and still falls down, especially when she tries to crawl faster. While crawling, she often rolls over, and that’s when her ear presses against the floor. She also tries to stand upright, holding onto many different objects.
She recently kept on removing the right-hand device, and when I noticed that her ear was red and a little swollen, I thought it best to remove the device. She has not been wearing it for three days.
On 21 April we were at Brenda’s once again and were given exercises to do with Denise. We were told, for example, to hold her in our arms, rock her to and fro and then stop in the middle of the activity, e.g. when she is about to be fed, so that she may then use her eyes to ask us to continue. What a struggle!!
We cannot get Denise to do what we want. When I rock her to and fro and then stop, she doesn’t look at me. She bends backwards to look at what’s behind her, or stares blindly at the roof.
When I’m feeding her, I start by withholding her food, so that she may look at me and ask for it with her eyes. Instead of doing that, however, she just sits, looks at the food and whines until I give it to her.
She does co-operate very nicely, though, when I take one of her rattles and shake it. I shake it and then put it into her hand, so that she may also shake it. That she does very nicely, but quickly gets bored with the game.
I was also instructed to let her copy me doing other things. When I smile at her, she smiles back at me, and when I clap my hands, she also claps.
Denise has a ball, which plays a number of tunes when one squeezes it. It doesn’t play very loudly, but she definitely hears it. She sits on the mat and squeezes it, and as soon as it starts to play a tune, she immediately looks at someone in the room (especially at her grandmother), smiles and expects one to move one’s head and sing along.
When she’s not wearing her “ears” and squeezes the ball, she doesn’t react to the music at all and just carries on playing. I have also noticed that when I call her from far away, she only responds when I call really loudly.
She also first looks around to try and find out where the sound is coming from, or she may even look at the wrong person.
Our telephone is in the living room, where she usually plays, and when it starts ringing she immediately crawls towards it. My brother usually phones during the afternoon, and when my mother is speaking to him, she first holds the phone to Denise’s ear so that he can say “hallo” to her. She then immediately starts smiling! She also has a fascination for my cell-phone. When I’m on the phone she just wants to grab it.
Denise has also started making other noises. I find it difficult to explain or copy the sounds, but it is no longer just “a-a-a-a.” She also makes a “grrrr-sound” and covers us with saliva when she blows out air, using her lips and tongue.
June – July
Denise is making good progress with her hearing devices. She has become quite used to them and doesn’t remove them anymore. The only time she removes them is when she wants to sleep, and then she’ll start fiddling with one of them and take it out.
She also often presses a hand against one of her ears, or presses the ear itself against an object, causing the apparatus to make a whistling sound. She likes listening to these whistling sounds. She’s also crawling very well and has stopped falling over when she wants to crawl faster. The blue marks on her ears have also disappeared.
On 30 June, when I arrived back home, my mother showed me that one of the hearing devices wasn’t working. I called Carina to ask her what to do. She suggested that I put the device in its drying container and leave it there for the whole weekend. If it still didn’t function the following Monday, we would have to send it in to be looked at.
When Monday arrived and it still wasn’t working, we sent it off to be fixed. We got it back after three days and Denise could once again hear very nicely.
On 7 July, we went once again to Nicoleze in Pretoria, where they performed tests on Denise, with and without her hearing aids.
Before we went there, Brenda had given us exercises to do with Denise, like sitting behind her and making noises, ranging from loud to soft, so that she would turn around and look at us when she heard something. That worked perfectly! When she was tested, she reacted very nicely. Carina and Nicoleze then turned her devices louder to enable her to hear softer sounds. That helped a lot!
The sounds Denise is currently making are quite different from the “a-a-a-a-sounds” she used to make. She utters little shrieks and makes many softer and finer sounds. We also constantly repeat the words “mamma” and “baba” to her. It sounds as if that is what she is trying to say, because sometimes she does succeed in making those sounds.
August
On 2 August we went to see Brenda again, and she said that Denise is only three months behind other children of her age. It was good to hear that, because it means that the hearing aids are definitely helping a lot.
On 15 August, Denise is going for her cochlear implants. With the help of our mayor Mr A. Maphetle, Cheryl Botha of our local newspaper, the Herald, Dalla and Brenda of Krurekpro and the Potchefstroom community, I have all the money needed for the operation.
There are also many other people I don’t know who made a contribution. Thank you very much to everyone! It is deeply appreciated.
This update was written by Liezl Hyde, Denise’s mom. Denise's hearing aids were sponsored by Widex South Africa.
Bookmark with:
What are social bookmarks?