After Ellie's hearing test at the hospital came back inconclusive an appointment was made for us with the outpaitents audiology clinic in Burnie. I hadn't thought too much about what the results would be, but I had talked to another cleft mum who got dissapointing results for her son, so I was somewhat prepared going in for bad news.
A baby needs to be asleep for these tests so that they don't move around and affect the muscles responses to the sounds. I was expecting this to be really challanging, because Ellie still wasn't the best sleeper, but she was on her best behaviour and stayed asleep through all four tests.
From the parents perspective, a hearing test is very boring. You just sit back and watch while little stickers are placed on your baby's head and then attached to a sound generator. Then the audiologist places a small cup over the baby's ear. This cup transmits little clicking noises, and the sticker probes detect muscle response from the audio nerve receptors. That's the simple version anyway.
A baby that can hear properly will reapond to these noises, and their muscles and nerves will react accordingly. A baby with a hearing problem wont have any response, or maybe some responses and some not.
Its normal for some babies to fail this first test, and then when they get tested again in a month's time everything is normal. They could have had a cold or a blocked ear, or just not been in the mood to play along. So a failed newborn screening doesn't have to mean a hearing problem.
But here's the catch. A baby with a cleft palate has a much higher chance of fluid building up in their ears and hardening to form a blockage. This blockage causes a loss of hearing. It's called glue ear, and there's nothing that can be done until grommets can be inserted at six to nine months old. The grommets then let the fluid drain away and the hearing returns.
Ellie failed. And then she failed again. The audiologist performed the test four times, and wasn't able to get a response. Her right ear was slightly better than the left, but the results meant that there was a hearing loss of some sort detected that would need to be investigated further.
Because we live in the north of the state, and not in Hobart where every single specialist of any description seems to be located, we had to wait over a month to see the audiology specialist. At this appointment more tests would be done to try and work out if the loss was caused by a blockage (and therefore fixable with grommets) or something nerve related (and not fixable).
Until then we had to wait. There was no way of telling how much Ellie could hear, and although we were fairly sure it was just a blockage, no promises that it wasn't something serious. Even though I thought I went in prepared, I was still pretty disapointed.
I knew it wasn't a huge deal, but it made me sad that Ellie had to go through yet another challange. What did she do to deserve all of these setbacks? She was just a tiny baby. So yes, I was chucking a giant "it's not fair" tantrum. And that tantrum got even worse when I found out how long we had to wait to see the specialist.
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