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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Coming up on 4 months!!

In just 6 days my little Finlay is going to be 4 months old. I can't believe that 4 months has passed since my Lil' Pumpkin ( he was supposed to be a Lil' Turkey) was added to our family. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. He is still such a little peanut but he just gets cuter by the day. He still doesn't have much hair, he has what I call old man hair. Bald on the top and hair around the bottom.

Since Finlay was born we have been testing him on his hearing. The day he came home from the hospital he had the standard OEA hearing screening. He passed in the left ear but essentially failed in the right ear. So when he was about a month old we had the BAER screening done and they repeated the OEA. He failed both tests in the right ear and passed in the left. At 3 months of age we did another BAER test but this time it was more extensive and he failed in both ears. We took him to see the ENT and he ordered a CT scan and another hearing test. He was unable to see all the way through the right ear but said that the left ear was clear. So yesterday we took him in to have both tests done. He was fed at 4:30 in the morning and then I held off feeding him until his testing so that he would be content and would sleep through the tests. He slept all the way through the hearing test but was calm and awake for the CT scan. The CT scan was only about 5 mins in length and the hearing test took a little over an hour. He failed the hearing test in both ears. Matt was able to talk to a radiologist and we were told that in the right ear the canal does not go down to the Tympanic Membrane it seems to just end about half way or so down. The inner ear is fully intact but because of the canal he is hearing nothing in the right ear. In the left eat the canal is very narrow but widens near the Tympanic Membrane. The membrane is a bit thicker than normal but the rest of the inner ear is fully intact. It means he is hearing some but how much is unknown. The canal is so narrow that it is limiting how much sound is getting to the inner ear. It was recommended to us to get him fitted with a hearing aid which may only be temporary. It was mentioned to us that it may be possible to widen the canal in the left ear which will possibly make his hearing in that ear significantly better. That is something we will have to discuss with the ENT. What we are going to do for now is get him fitted with a soft band BAHA. The BAHA device is snapped into a band and then the band just fits around his head. Since he is an infant the BAHA will sit either on his forehead when he is laying down or on the back of his head when he is on his tummy. This will actually allow him to hear in both ears. There is a small possibility that as he grows his ears will grow too and he will begin hear better through them but most likely he will need surgery for that to happen. We have already gotten the ball rolling on the BAHA. We called the ENT who needs to write an order and submit that to insurance and then we need to wait on insurance. After that we will get him fitted with the BAHA.

Other than the hearing difficulties Finlay is doing well. Tomorrow he has an appt with the pediatrician so we will find out how much my little peanut weighs. He has been taking about 5-5.5oz every 5 hours and sleeping about 6-7hrs at night. Compared to how he was doing when he came home he has made up for that. He will have his days here or there where he just doesn't want to eat. Instead he screws with me and plays with the nipple taking little sips from the bottle making it so the bottle won't be good after an hour. I can tell he is messing with me b/c he is looking right at me and grinning like a fool. He is also starting to babble. I can have entire conversations with him. Tonight at dinner we were discussing which preschool we were going to put Ethan in in the fall and Finlay was just sitting in his chair putting in his input on the subject. Of course he was doing it with a huge smile on his face. Later Ethan was messing with Finlay's feet and Fin was like a grinning fool. He was loving having Ethan play with him. Finlay loves his big brother and he loves it when his big brother plays with him. As he gets bigger they are going to have so much fun together.