Four Weeks Post Activation

It has been almost a whole month since Logan's CIs were turned on.  My how time flies! We have certainly been busy with all the extra therapy sessions that have been added in the past month.  We have teachers from both Easter Seals and our school district that we now see once a week each (previously twice a month), our advisor from Sunshine Cottage whom we also see weekly and Logan's physical therapist, which has been bumped to a weekly occurrence as well.  In the next month or so, we'll also be adding Speech Therapy to the mix!

I am very happy to say that I am pleased with the progress he has made in the last month.  As you may or may not know, cochlear implants provide a whole new way of hearing so the recipient must learn how to interpret the information from the digital signal his brain is receiving from them.  Because of this, we were told to consider his hearing like he is a newborn and to expect his vocalizing and speech to roughly follow the timeline of a child in his first year of life.  Of course, this is only a generalization and some children progress much faster than this and other progress slower.

Well, during the first couple of weeks with his new ears Logan was pretty quiet, as expected, since he was learning to listen with his new ears.  But over the last week he has started babbling again! I am thrilled because this started before his ears were even a month old.  He is saying ma-ma-ma-ma and ah ah ah ah.  When I first told one of his teachers she was very excited because she said it usually takes a lot longer for CI kids to start babbling again.

Last Wednesday, his implants were remapped because his swelling has gone down a lot over the last month and they were able to make them louder for him.  Since then, I've also noticed that he is starting to turn more and more toward sounds.  I've even caught him dancing to music, something he had never done before.  We can't wait to see what the next month will bring!