Confirmed

The diagnosis is official - nerve deafness.

My daughter has nerve deafness - thank goodness it is just in one ear. The diagnosis wasn't a surprise really - she failed her newborn hearing screening in that ear, so we've always known something was up. But the ENT and the audiologist insisted they couldn't get accurate results from a hearing test (you know, the one in the sound proof booth) until at least age four. She's now had two tests, six months apart that have shown the same results: she can hear very high frequencies and very low frequencies in that ear; but almost all human speech falls into the range of frequencies she can't hear.

I know the hearing loss effects her because of the little things she does. She refers to her good ear as "my listening ear" and has told me (while pointing accurately) "this ear doesn't work." This morning, while she was playing on the computer, she choose to only put the ear bud into the good ear. I thought the other one just fell out so I offered to help her put it in so it would stay. She assured me, "No Mama, I don't want it." O.K. - whatever works, I guess.

As of right now, life is good. She is already asking us to repeat things when she doesn't quite hear us. I'm sure "selective hearing" will start when she is a teenager, but she's not there yet. And as of this week there is an amplification system for her preschool classroom so the teacher's voice can be slightly louder than the din. The speech therapist is monitoring her and tells me her speech is "age appropriate." Apparently Ls, Fs and Ths are harder sounds to make and are often not perfected until later, so I shouldn't worry about her inability to make them correctly. But, of course, I do. I am her mama after all, it's my job to worry about her...