Children, parents, and professionals in partnership |
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Family Stories: Saha's Story I found out that Saha had some degree of hearing loss when she was two days old through the newborn screening programme, which luckily for us had been introduced fairly recently in Glasgow. After further investigations I was told that she had a severe hearing loss and at six weeks old she got fitted with hearing aids. She wore these for her first year but at twelve months old, at a routine audiology appointment, it was discovered that her hearing had deteriorated suddenly making her profoundly deaf. Around this time most of her hearing little friends were beginning to say their first words and this combined with the sudden drop in her hearing made me start looking further afield for other options. After one late night internet search I came across an American site which talked about Auditory Verbal Therapy and from there I found AVUK and this page with videos of deaf children listening and talking. I think I was on the phone to Rachel very early the next morning! It was no mean feat getting down from Glasgow and involved flying to either London or Birmingham and then getting the train to Bicester and back again in the evening. I’ll never forget our first appointment with Jacqueline; after twenty minutes, Saha, who up until now had just been babbling, was imitating various vehicles and animals and then right at the end came that elusive first word, “up”. I was a convert and we came down every month up until Saha reached four years old.
Saha is just about to start mainstream primary and I feel confident that she will be successful, have many friends and advocate for herself. Her last nursery report stated that she has ‘strong leadership skills’ and that she was ‘a very popular girl who has completely integrated into the nursery’. I just wish I could go back to the person I was in Saha’s first year of life, who was very down and worried to the extent of being an insomniac, and tell myself that it’s going to be alright, she’s going to be OK. Reading the stories on this page was one of the first things that gave me a glimmer of hope and I hope our story can now do that for other parents dealing with the diagnosis in those early days. Outcomes have never been better for deaf children with the advent of CIs and digital aids, but more important is you the parent who needs to be inspired and empowered to help your little person reach their potential and for that I will be eternally grateful to Jacqueline Stokes and Rosie Richardson and everyone at AVUK.
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We were so lucky and are very grateful to have been accepted onto