28th February 2015
My baby Princess has turned one! 525,600 minutes ago (or thereabouts), we welcomed her into this world after a trouble free pregnancy for her, although a pretty painful one for my hips! She was born in the caul (in her membranes) which is pretty rare and she definitely deserved that entrance as she is one in a million!
The news that our Princess was profoundly deaf stunned us emotionally and it's probably only now that we are beginning to work through how we feel and how her deafness effects us. However, despite all the negativity surrounding the diagnosis of a "special need", we are daily astounded by her joyfulness, intelligence and progress.
The Princess has a special talent for making people fall in love with her, I believe it is mostly to do with her amazing eye contact, she has "Deaf Eyes" which take in everything. You cannot sneak up on her or try to hide something when she is around, she sees it all and there no fooling her, even at this young age. Often people don't believe us that she is deaf because she is so receptive to the conversation and behaves so appropriately at all times, especially when people are telling funny stories - it's like she can feel which emotion to portray and she does it spectacularly.
Her first six days in the hearing world (with her CIs), has been astonishing. She can now hear clapping, clicking fingers, shouting, knocking and banging pots & toys. There may also have been reactions to squeaky doors, whistling and the Hoover. Although she hasn't shown emotion towards hearing any sounds yet, she is very curious and wants to know where the sound comes from and what it is, which is amazing progress and for which we are constantly thankful. We continue to hope that our Princess will receive enough hearing to hear speech so we can tell her (as well as sign to her), that we love her and maybe even one day we might be able to hear her beautiful voice say it in return!
Today, we sung & signed the "Happy Birthday Song" to Princess and she loved it all, I hope she maybe heard a little of it, but I will never know. What I do know is that we have really learnt the value of communication and I am so proud of my boys (7, 5 & 3) who are learning to sign for their sister too.
Today was an exhausting, but very special day as we celebrated her first birthday with family and friends - some quiet and relaxing celebrations at home, with some manic, ear-bursting celebrations at her party (part of which actually required her implants to be switched off!).
Here's to many more happy & healthy years to come and if she continues the way she has begun, our little Princess will have an amazing future ahead of her.
We love you, little Princess xx
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