We finally did it!

Well,we finally did it! We read stories,watched youtube about others who have done it but we never tried it.Now we finally did it! Well,Rhianna did it.She swam with her CI on...what a glorious day!

I've read about people who let their children bathe or swim or play with the sprinklers with the N5.We have seen people waterproofed their CIs in various method.Aloksak bag,food saver metbod,balloon method but we were too scared to try.We don't have back up processors here.We don't even have insurance for these equipments.We have to pay everything out of our own pocket,.. imagine the fear.

But I'm determined not to let these equipments restrict or compromise my child's lifestyle.I want her to be able to do what other children can do including hearing while swimming.So after some research and thinking,we decided to try the aloksak bag.We found the only supplier in Malaysia and they are in our neighbourhood!

After some trials and errors and lots of complaints from miss R (the headband is too tight,the bag is poking her neck,the magnet won't stick etc) we finally managed it.And she loves it!

We just use one processor for swimming purposes which is the N5.
It is just too hard to get both sides on and the old side is nucleus freedom which is not as waterproof as the N5.So we figure that we'll just use the N5 which is her new side. That way,she could also have more practice listening with just the new side.Smart eh?

So here you go..

With best friend Mr Turtle

The smile is precious..the ability to hear is priceless

A complaint or a compliment?

So,I don't post as often as I would like to mainly because we're always busy. Another reason is because there's not much to report.

Miss R is doing very well.The only complaints that we get from pre school is she talks too much. That is not really a complaint,more like a compliment to me.I grinned when I heard that. Seriously,my deaf child likes to talk.I love it (most of the times anyway).

We have stopped worrying about her speech and language development.We just continue trying to give her more language experience to further expand her vocabulary.So we have a couple of trips planned.In March we're flying to the beautiful Langkawi island for a lot of fun family activities and in May we're taking a one week road trip to our national park.
It will be fun,fun,fun!

A princess bike and an angry bird cake

It's been a long time since we last posted anything so Happy New Year to everybody!
My (not so little ) girl is doing tremendously well in term of speech and hearing.I can say she is bilingual now even though her Malay is a bit better than her English.

During the long semester break we worked on her reading skills and I'm proud to say that she is now reading very well for a not yet 5 year old.She is reading for both languages and her Malay is better than her English of course as it is very easy to learn to read in Malay.She mastered the CVCV  form in just 2 weeks.I'm so proud of her and she is proud of herself too.She is now fully mainstreamed in normal kindergarten with no special assistance whatsoever and doing very well too.

She speaks in long sentences and has acquired the higher language skills like reasoning,predicting,bargaining and other creative things.She can keep quiet for 3 seconds at one time.Really!We once played  "who can stay quiet"  game in the car during a long drive because everybody need some break from her continuous chatter.She lasted 3 seconds max!
So before this I complained that she doesn't talk,now I complain that she doesn't stop.People say that she is making up for the silent years.I say that she is born to talk and so she talks.I also think that her enjoyment of talking is one of the reasons why she talks so well and catched up very fast with 2 languages.

Another skill that she acquired during the long semester break is riding a bike.She can now pedal and handle her bicycle nicely though still with training wheels.She couldn't pedal before because of her vestibular and proprioception issues but she can now.Guess what happened next?
She requested for a new bike of course!
Her current bike is still so new because she didn't ride before.But being a talker,she talked us into buying her a pink and purple Barbie princess bike with glitter.I don't even know if such thing exists.

So far we are having a good year and looking forward to many new and wonderful things ahead.The only thing is I can't really accept the fact that she'll be 5 years old this May.
How time flies...
Happy New Year !

p/s : and for her birthday she wanted an angry bird birthday cake.The bird must be a pink coloured girl bird with a ribbon on her head.Any ideas?

Fun girl down

So,my fun girl was down from one illness to another.Last couple of weeks she contracted a viral fever complete with coughing and vomiting.Not very pretty,yes.She recovered in a few days but was cranky for a while.

Last Saturday she contracted  stomach flu, a severe one too and it nearly got her admitted to a hospital.Luckily she didn't refuse fluid so we were able to keep her at home. I had to give her 75 ml of ORS fluid every hour.If there was any vomiting or diarrhoea, I was to add another 90-120ml.Believe me,that was A LOT of water and I had to give it in sips not gulps to avoid more vomiting.So we were stuck in bed taking sips of water for at least 8 hours while watching Strawberry Shortcake DVD over and over again.It gave us plenty of cuddle time which was nice.The not so nice part was when she refused her CIs (which is understandable considering how sick she was feeling).

However,her not hearing left me feeling so inadequate.She talks like she normally does when she has no CIs on and she read lips quite well but only within context.If you try to explain something new,it would be terribly hard and she would start to guess a lot and we both would end up frustrated.Then,I would start feeling sad,upset and nervous over how much language opportunity that would be lost during these silent hours.

Ok,I know I should take it easy but it takes a lot of struggle on my part to relax when I have all these mixed up feelings.It doesn't help that Miss R refuses her CIs every time she is sick.How do I explain to her that the injection will only sting a bit and it will help stop the vomiting or she has to sip the water and not gulp no matter how thirsty she feels to avoid vomiting or the sips of water will prevent her body from getting dehydrated and many other things like that if she can't hear me?
Maybe we should start our sign language course soon.

Anyway,the good news is she's almost back to her own happy self.

Miss R and her army of dolls

Two years of hearing (and nonstop talking )

So, Miss R celebrated her 2nd hearing birthday on September 15th.She was switched on at 2 years 4 month of age and has moved at lightning speed since.She learned to detect,discriminate,identify and imitate all Lings 6 sounds within 2 weeks of switch on and produced her first words at 3 weeks post switched on.She started combining words about 2 months post switch on and she achieved all these milestones with us struggling to keep the CI on her.She hated her CI initially.I really didn't understand it since she was learning so much and enjoying the sounds that she could now hear.I guess she must have enjoyed giving us a hard time then.

Now she enjoys both of her CIs and is a true chatterbox who never stops talking.The only times that I could enjoy some peace and quiet is when she is asleep (late) and napping (rarely). We still haven't tested her recent language skill though we suspect that she is already on par with her peers.It's a tricky thing since we don't have any form of formal testing and no norm in Malaysia where most children are multilingual.Miss R is bilingual with Malay as her first language and English her second.She is learning some mandarin in preschool but we are opting for extra English class in replacement of Mandarin class for next year.We'll just keep her bilingual at the moment.

She enjoys listening to music (something that I couldn't imagine before) and going to participate in talent time contest in December organised by Opus academy of music.All the preparation is being done by the dedicated teachers so I can't write much about this.We'll start her on an instrument (most likely piano) next year when she is more ready.

So,now she looks like other kids and does things that other 4 year olds do except that she has extra gadgets on her ears.Maybe soon I will teach her how to explain her CI to other people.

Now,the only area that needs a bit more adjusting is her social skills.She's fine in preschool and daycare with familiar people but she tends to be very shy with strangers or new people.She will need at least 20 minutes of warm up time before she starts talking.
It's really ok, but it's not fun for me especially when I want to show off my talking child and the miracle of CI to some new people and my chatterbox child decided to keep quite and ignore the person who is talking to her.I have no idea what motivates her to do this, probably only the sheer happiness of exasperating her mother.God knows.

Before, I couldn't stop thinking about her deafness.Now,it has become a non issue.She could hear and talk like other children.Putting on the CIs has become second nature like putting on shoes or socks.Something that  I couldn't imagine possible but is IS possible with a little bit of work and perseverance.