Doc Says-

"Share these" he says as he throws me a bag of 2 servings of M&Ms and saunters out the door in a suit and tie. Off to another business dinner, I'll imagine he's having steak and wine while I'm heating up chicken nuggets and pretending mashed potatoes is a vegetable. There's no chance these boys are getting any M&Ms. They've been nuts today. Mostly Baby A. He has yet another ear infection. He just can't seem to get rid of them and they are making me crazy. He's a very cranky young man these days and is making it hard on me to get anything done. It seems like my house is always in disarray. I try, I do, but you can only sweep up crumbs and wipe up milk eighty five times a day before you're just like "BRING ON THE ANTS- I'm sitting down".
I'm so tired. There's not enough time in the day and there certainly isn't enough time for me to sit down and write here, but I'm doing it anyway. That's where I've been lately- tending to my children, going to school, and working on my business in between baby #3 doctor appointments. It has been nuts. I have sat and waited in a doctor's office three times this week and I realize it's Thursday. The rate we've been going, I'm just crossing my fingers that number doesn't climb by the weeks end.
I have exactly eight days left in this semester. Everything EVERYTHING is due right now and these sicknesses my boys keep struggling with often throw a kink in my plans. I'm going to get this all done, though...and then I'm going to relax start another class. Boo.
Anyway, I really appreciate all the congratulatory comments you made on my last post about the babe starting to babble. I really was beginning to think he was on the mend and that when he got his tubes put in his ears that he would be talking up a storm in no time. I was hesitant to feel that way, but still I threw my hopes into that and I shouldn't have. Monday morning, I took him to a developmental specialist who assessed him and apologized profusely that it took her so long to see him. She said, "I don't know how he slipped through the cracks! We should have seen him after his referral in January." "Well, yeah", I thought, "Someone is finally taking me seriously about his language delay." She stepped out of the appointment to call Vanderbilt and try to get me squeezed into an appointment as quickly as possible after she heard about the delay we were experiencing in Chattanooga with both the ENT and audiologist there. She said it was unacceptable. She called Vandy and they didn't have any openings until the end of July, unless I could come the next morning because they just had a cancellation. I told her I absolutely would and began making plans to travel in the awful weather so we could get there to get him checked out by "the best." I got too worried to drive that night so I ended up leaving bright and early with my sister the next morning to drive to Nashville. The folks there relayed a much different diagnosis to us regarding his hearing. She told us that while the tests they were doing weren't as accurate as the ABR, she was confident enough to tell us that Baby A is experiencing severe to profound hearing loss. He's deaf.

I could tell you a million different things right now that I've been thinking about. It's mostly guilt. Confusion. Worry.
We started the process of getting him cochlear implants that day. She said that what she saw would need to be confirmed by his upcoming sedation ABR/tube insertion but that she was ready to get us started on this path because it does take a long time. This coming Monday, we will take my sweet boy off to have his ears molded for fitting of hearing aids. We've been told that the hearing aids will not allow him to hear, but rather get him used to having something on his ear and the sensations of possible sound amplification. During the tests, she had the machine up as loud as it would go (hurting my own ears) and he did not respond so she doesn't expect these to help at all but it is just part of the process.
I know he's usually happy. I know he'll be just fine. Still, I often break out in tears because K tries to talk to him all day. I'm sure they will develop their own way of communicating, but right now as I watch it just hurts my heart. I wish I could help Baby A. We have lots of specialists in our future who can, though and so I'm working diligently to get all these lined up for him. That's where I've been lately. I've been busy.

I'm hoping things will slow down soon and I can venture back to the land of blogging. I miss it very much. Thank you all for the texts, calls, and comments you've left already about my boy. He's going to be just fine and is exactly who God wants him to be and I can find joy in that. I'm so happy to be his mom.
Thanks for checking in with us.

Love,

*Photos by Becky Davis