To hear or not to hear?

That is indeed the question, as in can Sophia hear or not kind of question.

When my daughter was born, she had a routine hearing test and the diagnose was: profound hearing loss on the left ear and moderate on the right. We did a couple of other hearing tests at the clinic where I had to sit with Sophia on my chest for at least an hour, the diagnosis didn't change much. The audiologist prescribed bilateral hearing aids, the right one fits well and she wears it most of the time, whereas the left one doesn't fit well because her ear canal is very small and the hearing aid doesn't stay in for long.

 During the last 4 years, Sophia has taken several hearing tests with the audiologist where they place us in a room and Sophia sits on my lap and they make sounds and noises that come from form left and right of the room, she responds to some of them and it has always been hard to tell how much is attention and how much is hearing loss.

The thing is that, anytime Sophia doesn't have her hearing aids on, she responds to sounds the same way she does when she is wearing them. I turn the TV on and she turns her head, I call out her name and she turns her head, I use the food processor and she notices right away, I hide a toy and turn it on and she looks for it, I whistle and she smiles... the list of examples is long.  How is it possible for somebody with profound and moderate hearing loss to hear these sounds and noises without a hearing aid?

The audiologist suggested to do another ABR test, which is the same test they do on newborns, to make sure what her hearing really is. When kids are older the test is done under anesthesia and because Sophia doesn't do great with that, we didn't want to put her under just for the test. Now that Sophia is having the hip surgery and she is going to be asleep anyways, we can do the test and know for sure what's going on.

The last few weeks, Sophia hasn't been wearing the hearing aids, for some reason she seems bothered by them. I don't know if the volume is too high and just now she is aware of that or what, but I have taken advantage of that and have given Sophia a lot of opportunities to show how well she is able to hear. She hasn't disappointed me! She doesn't always respond to the source of sound but I really think that is more for lack of attention or lack of interest more than lack of hearing. 

The audiologist is a little skeptical but I am not making this up and I really hope this test we are doing in September shows what I see everyday and that somehow she was misdiagnosed when she was a newborn and that she doesn't need hearing aids. We will wait and see, in the mean time, check out this killer smile: