Esther Marie's Hearing Is NORMAL!!!! (We had a great follow-up visit at the Cleft Clinic!)

We had an awesome visit this morning at the cleft clinic, and we are praising God right now! The hearing loss that Esther Marie had was apparently due to the wax and terrible fluid in her ears, and now that all of it has been cleaned out, she is hearing within normal ranges. We are SO happy about this!! The tubes that were put in are clear and those are doing what they should be doing...keeping that bad ole fluid away. We saw the audiologist first thing and that set the mood for the rest of the visit. We were practically doing "the happy dance!"

Next we saw the speech therapist, Ms. Judy, and she explained some speech excercises we could work on with Esther Marie until they test and evaluate her in three months. We have another visit at the clinic on December 11th. Until then, we will work with the early intervention program to improve speech and other issues. Ms. Judy was very happy to learn that we were already hooked up with this program. We got Esther Marie to say "bye bye" to Ms. Judy and she thought it sounded VERY good.

Last, we met with Dr. G....Emmie's surgeon....and he took a look at the roof of her mouth and thought the repair and the healing looked great. She still has stitches visible in there, but by 5 or 6 weeks, they should come out. The stitching under the skin will dissolve and the visible stitching will fall out. He warned us not to be shocked if she handed us pieces of stitching! As far as her food goes, we will continue the softer diet for another couple of weeks just to be safe and then transition her to a "normal" diet.

So how did Esther Marie act and respond during all of this? She did surprisingly well! She didn't cry at all when we went into the hospital or when we were just waiting. When we went back to see the audiologist, she cried when he got too close and when he put things in her ears. Otherwise, she acted normal. She got to sit in mommy's lap while she listened to sounds and that helped. For Ms. Judy, she didn't seem to be upset because there were toys to play with and she wasn't having an actual examination. She played ball with Ms. Judy. For Dr. G, she did get upset and was clinging to mommy for dear life. She was crying while he looked into her mouth, but that actually helped him see in there better. Once that was over and she was sitting back over by dad, away from Dr. G, she perked up again and started to play. She had on her little green sunglasses and Dr. G just loved those. He took a picture of her in them while mommy held her. He had a laser light and teased her with it and they played some games and made faces, squinting their eyes at each other and sticking tongues out! It was pretty funny and soon she was smiling and laughing. We just LOVE Dr. G...he is very sweet and has a great bedside manner and he does great surgery work too!

Esther Marie got to leave the clinic at the hospital feeling good about her visit without crying as she left. She was waving bye-bye and blowing kisses to everyone. It was a GREAT visit and we had a good morning. Many thanks to all of you who were praying for us....for great hearing results and for the clinic visit!! Now we will focus on the intervention program and getting Emmie to say more words. She chatters away at times, so wonder what it will be like when all those little sounds are actually words??? We can't wait!!!