[desilu1991]

PLEASE CHECK THE ORIGINAL POSTING DATE FOR THIS POST BEFORE RESPONDING TO DESILU.

We found out tonight that a baby we have been hoping to adopt for over a month now is deaf in one ear and can only hear between 10-50% in his other ear. We had never thought about a special needs baby, but we are both really feeling pulled towards this particular child. We have wonderful insurance to cover the surgery that we've been told he needs that might restore a good bit of his hearing. He's only two months old and he's beautiful and even with his hearing problem, we still want him just as much.

I just wondered if anyone else has adopted a baby with a similar problem and if you had any tips or if your child had surgery, did it help? I have asked for detailed medical records to take to our pediatrician, but I'm not sure what to ask.

If anyone can help, please let me know. We are going to have to make a decision in the next few days, although I already feel that we have been led to this little guy and he's got me wrapped around his tiny finger already! I'm so excited, but I just need to know what to ask next.

Thanks a lot... I'll keep you posted on what happens.

desilu

[estadt519]

Hi Desilu,

I don't have any information for you, but I just wanted to let you know how much your post moved me. I couldn't help but think the baby you are considering would be so lucky to have you as parents! And, I'm sure that you will find yourselves very lucky, no matter what the outcome, to share in the special bond that will be forged as you help nurture and parent this helpless little baby through whatever life has in store for him down the road!

Keep us posted!

D.

[LoveRiddenDad]

While my one S/N child has something totally unrelated (intersexed), I can relate to the surprise. While we didn't have surgery for her for a number of reasons, your problem is a bit different. A friend of mine has a partially child with a cochlear implant and the sooner they get it, the better!!! If your little boy has the same sort of deafness, this could be the answer. Don't wait!

Mike

[csw]

Hi
I say go with your heart!..you are drawn to this child for a reason...you do need to ask yourself if the surgery doesnt restore his hearing..are you prepared to have a hearing impaired child...there are so many options now..I would imagine you should talk with a specialist before you make your decision.. I really admire you...

[Shoshana]

My sister (adopted so not bio) has a significant hearing impairment and was taught to lip read. Her three sons also have various degress of hearing loss. (and my sister was able to get a court order for her adoption papers & learned her bio father was deaf).

Anyway, the middle son has the most significant impairment. He's 12 wears hearing aids and has had speech therapy since he was 3. He's an amzing child - even plays football. A cochlear implant would not have improved his hearing.

There is a whole deaf culture out there - that we rarely see - with many resources available.

Best wishes in making your decision. I know our family wouldn't trade any of these kids for ones with perfect hearing.

[foxl]

There is a girl mainstreamed in my daughter's daycare -- 3.5 - 4 y/o who is partially deaf. She speaks beautifully, is in speech therapy, and has not needed any "catch-up help."

I just wanted to comment on how lucky you are to have had his hearing difficulty diagnosed so early -- despite it being familial in "K's" case, she was diagnosed until over 1 year ... and she STILL is thriving socially and academically.

Are you aware of all the implicatiosn of his specific diagnosis? That might be significant -- co-factors might require additional therapies or helps -- and bear looking into.

My daughter has a neuromusculoskeletal injury from birth, and her rehabilitation has been the most satisfying experience of my life!

Best wishes,
Linda

[Laurie K]

sat down to discuss disabilities, my husband and I both said that hearing impaired and blindness we could handle. My best friend (like a sister) is an interpreter (sp) and teacher. Her first husband was deaf as well. Educate yourself as much as possible and find out what resources (schools, etc) are availabe in your community. The deaf culture are out there and are beautiful people.

I wish you the best.

[foxl]

several places, I have read something

Please, if you choose to decline this referral, do so without guilt! Adoptive parents tend to think that by declining a referral they are depriving the child of a home. As Nikki (in another thread!)pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth.

I went through the pain of declining TWO (pretty severe) special needs referrals, and felt horrible. I later found out BOTH had been accepted elsewhere, within weeks.
Linda

-- I just hate the thought of anyone feelign worse than they should!

[amorriso]

i don't have any experience personally with a special needs child yet. my neice who is expected in December has a severe cleft lip/palate. these kids may have other disabilites like hearing loss or blindness.
my point is that when you have a biological child, you can't control their health and problems like hearing loss. if you can handle this, which you seem like you can, then i say go for it. it seems as if God has placed this child in your life for a reason. this child needs someone to love and nuture it, no matter what. we never know what kind of problems our kids may develop. God won't give you anything that He will not help you with.


amorriso
waiting on Zach..."HE has made everything beautiful in its time..." Ecc. 3:11

[Annee]

My co-worker has two granddaughters who are nearly deaf. One (15 y.o.) has had the cochlear implant and is doing fantastically. She's involved in numerous sports and does well in school and socially.

The other (5 y.o.) is not a candidate for the implant, but she wears hearing aids and does very well. In fact, her verbal skills are excellent - sometimes her grandma thinks that her verbal skills are a bit too well-developed LOL!.

Their parents have spent a good bit of time working with them since infancy on improving their "listening" skills. Neither girl signs and both read lips and attend public schools.

The best of luck in your decision! This little boy and you are in my thoughts.

[desilu1991]

I really appreciate all your very helpful information and your kind and encouraging words. I do feel like God has placed this baby in our path for a reason and I am really feeling strongly that this baby was meant for us. I had no idea how well those implants work or that children could actually lead a semi if not almost completely normal life with the help of hearing aids and other hearing devices. I have had absolutely no experience with hearing impaired people or people with children with hearing impairments, and hearing about all of your friends and family and how they've dealt with this disability was very encouraging to me and my husband.

At this point, I don't think it's a question of whether or not we plan to accept this baby. It's pretty much trying to get as much information as we possibly can about his condition and finding the right doctors that can do the most for him when we get him home.

He seems very healthy other than his hearing loss. At one month and 6 days, he already weighed 10 lbs. He's just a little angel and he's smiling in his pictures and that is a good sign to me. I just hope we can move some paperwork here very fast to get this whole case moving. Our attorney is supposed to be very highly recommended and he is known for getting his cases through in record time, so hopefully that will be be the case with this little guy.

Right now the attorney is trying to get more details about the baby's condition, so I'm waiting to hear back from him as we speak. I know that if this is the baby God intended for us, then everything is going to come together the way it should and one day this baby will be a permanent part of our family. Please keep us in your prayers as we take this giant step on faith.

Thanks to all of you for responding and encouraging me. I really appreciate everyone who takes time to share on this forum. You will never know how much help you've been.

Desilu...

[guatdad]

Hi Desilu,

As long as he's healthy, he will be fine. There are many options such as doing the Cochlear Implants, wearing hearing aids, going through speech therapy, learning sign language, and many more... First he will need to be evaluated when he comes home to find out the severity of his hearing loss before going the next step.

My wife and myself are profoundly deaf. At the beginning of the adoption process, we were pursing for a healthy, deaf infant. We were referred a deaf baby boy from Guatemala who we gladly accepted but then later to find out that his b.m. changed her mind and kept him. Of course our hearts were broken. After several months of searching for other special need or deaf baby, the agency instead offered us a baby boy with normal hearing who we also gladly accepted. Nelson came home to us at 5.5 mos old and is a very loving, wonderful boy Today at 2.5 yrs old!

To make this story more interesting, exactly three months after Nelson's homecoming, my wife, Susan, found out that she was pregnant by some miracle! When our second son, Cody, was born, we found out that he is profoundly deaf! He's a beautiful baby boy and very healthy!

If you have any further questions about communication, education, technology for the deaf, or anything, please feel free to PM me anytime. We are very happy to read that you are still going ahead for that beautiful baby boy! Our parents went through just like you are going through right now, with no experience of the deafness. Don't be too scared. We turned out to be normal adults with college degrees and successful careers.

Best of Luck,
Mark

[myguatbabes]

Hey! I can only tell you about our experience. Our son, now almost 20 is adopted and has special needs. His disability is different, but I can only tell you that God works in mysterious ways. I would like to take a moment and share our story.

After 6 years of trying to have a biological child and 6 miscarriages, my dh and I decided that the stress and heartache of failed pregnancy was too much. We were talking about adopting and one afternoon, I came home from work and saw a news report that a 2 year old boy had been hit by a car in a neighboring county. I began to pray that God would spare that little boy's life and give him to me. I promised God that if He would give me that child, I would love him with all my heart and always take care of him. We then began our adoption journey with our home study and interview. Then we were interviewed and chosen by DSS to parent a 4 year old boy who had a traumatic brain injury. I walked into DSS and saw this little boy limping down the corridor holding our social workers hand. I knelt down in front of him and said, "Hi Josh." He looked at me for a second and said, "Hi Mommy." I grabbed my son in tears and held on for dear life.

A few weeks later, we met with Josh's siblings who were all placed in separate adoptive homes. Josh's brother Charlie was adopted by a minister who knew the family. We were on the porch talking and Charlie's dad (0ut of the blue) asked if I remembered hearing on tv a couple of years ago about a little boy being run over in the county above. I got chills all over! I said I had and he told me that little boy was Josh!

I had no doubt that God answered my prayer and gave him to me and I have NEVER regretted for one moment accepting the responsibility of a special needs child. Everyone will tell you how special you are for accepting that kind of responsibility, but don't be fooled even for a second-- you are among God's chosen to be so very blessed by such a precious and special gift! Please don't let that physical challenge deter you from accepting the child God obviously wants you to have and love for your very own! Good Luck and God Bless.

Nancy

[Seattle68]

Please don't adopt a Deaf(hearing impaired is an offensive term in the Deaf Community) Child with the goal of fixing him!!

There is nothing impaired about a Deaf Child. Hearing folks are impaired in their limited communication abilities.
The idea of putting a small child under general anasthetic and cracking their skull open for a Cochlear Implant to make them "more like everyone else" is horrible! Are you really willing to risk putting a little one under for something elective??? The success rate with Cochears varies wildly! Cochlear Implants are not the answer or a quick fix. They rarely tell you about the failure rate to acquire speach etc. but it is high! Not to mention the risks of such an hideously invasive procedure.

Raising a Deaf child, or hard of hearing for that matter can open up a whole world of people to you if you do it with an open mind.
Learn to sign.
Take a class in American Sign Language. Conact your local Deaf Center-look in the blue pages in your phone book.
That is where you will find true support and an idea what a percentage of loss truly means.

If you are truly drawn to this child love them as they are, not how you hope to make them through surgery or other training.
Learning to lip read is not a given. Not all people can learn to lip read. It is a bit like having an ear for music. Either you can learn to sing or you can't, no amount of training can teach some people and others just take to it.
However, if there is residual hearing the chances of successfull lip reading are a bit better.
Speech is another issue. Most Deaf people don't speak like hearing people-ever. Hard of hearing folks usually do and some folks with some residual hearing do too.
All too often you see parents obsessed with Johnny or Susy "talking like everybody else" to the degree that academic time is sacrificed for speech therapy and audiology appiontments. This is wrong.

Deaf Children who sign first have a much greater degree of success with English and reading. If you can sign you will KNOW your child and they will know you and will truly be a parent to them.

Don't you always hear communication is the key to any relationship?? That doesn't mean just in English.
Children with good relationships with their parents, good communication, have much better teen years than those who don't.

Do you only want to be able to "talk" to your child when they have their hearing aids on? Do you want to be struggling when the batteries die or they have just gotten out of the shower or are in bed at night??
Lip reading is exhausting to boot. Try it sometime.
I'm not saying don't use hearing aids etc. I'm just saying don't expect them talk and act like a hearing child. You need to decide if you can love them as they are, not as they could be if you could remodel them.

Raising a Deaf child and having a family who all sign can truly bring you closer together whether hearing or Deaf.
If you are looking to fix this poor little Deaf child, please don't.

[kelleymac]

I didn't hear anyone on this thread say they felt a need to "fix" this child. What I heard was a concerned parent, asking for education and support and receiving it.

If a child has a chance at normal hearing, I think it's the parent's choice to make that decision. I think there are those here who would disagree about a cochlear implant being an "elective" device.

And please don't assume from my post that I don't care/don't know anything about the deaf community. I am proficient in ASL, and am teaching my son who has normal hearing to sign. (not just baby signs, but for the rest of his life. If he can learn Spanish, he can learn another language -- ASL.)

Kelley