June 2011 – 1 in 1,000

Over the past few weeks Brian and I noticed that Madison was not responding to sounds.  Pans would drop on the floor of the kitchen and she would remain sound asleep.  Fire trucks would pass down our block and she would not stir.  We found ourselves purposely making loud noises to see if Madison would flinch… She would not.  This is when our research began… We started reading about different reasons babies do not pass the newborn hearing screen.  Since the pregnancy was healthy and there were no direct links to hearing loss, we didn’t even suspect this was an issue.  We learned that for every 1,000 babies born, 1 has profound hearing loss.  We felt the reason she wasn’t passing the tests was due to fluid in her ears.  Worst case scenario was she would need to have tubes surgically placed to remove the fluid, if it didn’t resolve on it’s own.