Activation Day!

So today was the day.... Hunter's hearing birthday! Today marks the first day that my baby boy's hearing journey began! Blair, Hunter and I started the day off at Another Broken Egg for breakfast. We were hoping that a full tummy would produce a nice, long nap on the way to New Orleans. Well we got a nice

nap, just not a long one! He slept for a grand total of 30 minutes on the way there :/ Oh well, there wasn't much we could do about it! For those of you who don't know, Hunter is a huge fan of food. I'm not sure how he doesn't weigh a ton by now, that boy must have a really high metabolism! Sooo, once we got to New Orleans, we went to lunch at the Piccadilly near the hospital. It's always been a family fave since we were little :)

Hunter was in good spirits at the beginning of the appointment. We started with the left here, and the first sounds he heard were little beeps generated by the computer. Here is a video of the first beeps he heard. Of course, it was a bit scary to him....

After a few beeps, and lots of trying to pull the CI off of his head, Hunter got to hear our voices for the first time. Here is that video....

There was a lot of reaching over and trying to take them off.... But here is the right ear activation. It kind of breaks my heart that he cries, but I probably would have done the exact same thing! Haha... Here's the right ear video....

Here is a our amazing audiologist, she is truly an angel :)

After information overload from our WONDERFUL audiologist on ALL of the equipment we had to take home, plus a training session on how to put the CI together, how to take it apart, all about the batteries, etc. we had one tired and fussy boy who still had not napped more than 30 minutes that morning. So we just knew the ride home would be quite peaceful involving a long nap. But he proved us wrong again :) He slept for about 20 minutes and was bright eyed the rest of the way home. It was VERY difficult keeping the implants on his head while he was in the carseat. I think I put the coil (magnetic part) back on 89 times because every time he moved his head, the magnet would come off. Then every time I touched his head, he tried pulling the whole thing off. There is a light on each outter portion of the CI, and when the magnet is on and he is getting sound, it blinks green. When the magnet is not connected, it blinks yellow. That's how we know that it's working.

Once we got home, everyone was ready to get out of the car! Blair wanted to just go walk around the neighborhood with him so that we could see if he left them on his head. Which he totally did! It was a great idea because there were numerous dogs barking. We found one of them and walked up to the dog, which Hunter was totally focused on, it was pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen! I kept pointing to my ear saying "I hear that, I hear the dog" and I was pointing to the dog. It was the perfect setting to test his new ears! We came back inside to show Hunter some of his toys and let him expore the fact that they make noise. He really beat on his drum more than normal, and it was amazing :)

My BIG thing with Hunter since the day he was born, and even after finding out that he was deaf, has been reading him books. I am kinda crazy about it and always badger Blair to make sure they read a book before bed. So once we took a bath, I was bound and determined to get those CIs back on so that we could read our book together :) It didn't last very long because putting on the CIs after bath time was a little traumatic. We were warned that putting his CIs on after extended periods of time without them would proabably be a little disturbing. And we got tears... again, but I just kept telling him it would be okay. And this will probably happen again tomorrow morning, and it may happen every morning for a while. But we know that soon enough, he will be asking for his ears when he wakes up in the morning!

I am having trouble uploading videos to you tube, but here are a few pictures from the rest of the day:


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The wire going down his back is for the battery pack that is attached to his shirt. Once he gets a little older, the battery pack will go behind his ear. It's a little heavy for his head right now, but I have a feeling it won't be long until we start trying it on his head to eliminate the wires going down his back.

 

One of our two SUITCASES of accessories/necessities!

PS. I am too tired to proofread this post. Excuse any typos.

Goodnight-
Elise :)