It’s funny how things swing in circles.
It’s been all focus on Clara’s stoma but that has calmed down dramatically in the last few days.
We’ve stopped recycling to give Clara’s skin a break and already the area between her stoma and mucous fistula is looking much better.
It’s now time to focus our attention on Clara’s hearing.
We’re off to another appointment in Audiology soon to repeat Clara’s previous hearing test. Whilst we know one ear has profound hearing loss (only hearing sounds over 90Db), we don’t know about the other ear as the results were inconclusive.
Clara has been diagnosed with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder – variable hearing loss. We just don’t know to what extent she can hear.
To get into good practice we now sign ‘milk’ to Clara before she’s fed, and we gesture a syringe motion to indicate its medication time.
At times, Clara is very vocal. But I don’t know how vocal a hearing baby would be and a baby with hearing loss would be at this age. (Clara is 16 weeks, 11 ‘corrected’ ie removing her prematurity).
It may be we have to wait until Clara is older to understand how she responds to sound with movement, ie physically turning her head.
Hopefully we’ll know a bit more this afternoon.
Clara and the Gutcracker 