We have takeoff

Got Roz weighed yesterday and she's moved from the 25th to the 50th percentile now; 12 lbs and counting. It was about this time that Izzy started shooting for the 91st percentile. All I know is that there are only so many repeats of her bouncing I can do before my arms start screaming for mercy.

It's quite funny - I remembered being quite excited about capturing Roz's smile (see video below) on the phone the other day. But now that I look at it again I'm thinking 'Hmm what was so special about that again?' And I think that's because since capturing that less than a week ago, her smiling has become so commonplace it now seems, if anything, a rather muted response.

Last night when she was sleeping she laughed twice - proper gurgling laughs, not strangled attempts at them. She hasn't done that awake and I wonder if that was her subconscious working out how to do it first. We shall see. 

Anyway am pleased to report that, like Izzy, thank the lord she seems to be a very laid-back bunny. She's quite easy to work out and, once satisfied, is quite quick to fall asleep again. At home, when I need to do something, she's quite happy to sit in either the car or bouncy seat and watch me. As long as I occasionally break off from what I'm doing - gingerbread cookies, prepping dinner - to coo and smile at her, she'll sit quietly. And smile back. And eventually fall asleep.

Now her cries are becoming a bit more nuanced as well. She has this little whimpering thing she does when she has nightmares, and the more plaintive 'ai, ai' complaint has emerged over the last one or two days. That has been employed when I've misinterpreted her pleas for sleep as wanting a feed or vice versa. Along with the little upturned mouth, these are quite hard to resist. She also does ANGRY - when I've told her too many times I'll pick her up in a minute. 

Bit of a damper

One not so good thing that's also emerged, unfortunately, is that poor Roz has got mild unilateral hearing loss. In normalspeak this means that, according to the hearing tests we've carried out on her so far, part of the routine screening for babies here, she might have difficulty hearing some high-pitched speech sounds - 'f', 's' and 'ch' for example - in her right ear.

It was a bit of a surprise to be told this, after three rounds of tests, because up till the last one, Roz was always just stirring enough during the tests - she's meant to be asleep - to be a bit inconclusive, and so we thought the inability to detect the higher-pitched sounds might have been due to blockages in her ear - something very common in babies - rather than due to some defect in the senses. Anyway at the last one they confirmed it seemed to be due to the cochlea rather than the passageway of the ear.

On the plus side, it's considered mild (the levels are mild, moderate, something else, and severe) and the audiologists carrying out the tests said since it was only in one ear, and mild, the other ear would probably compensate. One said that it was one of those things where, had we not carried out the tests, no one would probably ever have noticed there was a problem.

However they still offer us the choice of having a hearing aid made for that ear. And this is what confuses me. Because on one hand the problem seems mild enough for us to ignore it. But if this were so why offer the hearing aid?

Anyway if nothing else what we do now is wait till she is about eight months old and then we can carry out more tests on her - behavioural ones, apparently. Not entirely sure what this means as I have yet to Google the whole business but roughly I think it means they'll test her to see how she's actually coping practically with the whole affair.

And now we'll be referred to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, to see if we can diagnose the cause (it's usually inherited or a problem in pregnancy); to the RNID; and to a paediatrician, who will monitor her hearing from now on as well. The main thing, they said, is that we've identified a potential problem, and to make sure she gets any support she needs to deal with it.

So. Still surprised, if not quite in shock, but will update more once I've gotten round to researching it. I think I'm still waiting to accept there might be any sort of problem at all. And maybe there won't be at all. One thing that cheers me immensely is the sort of support provided by the NHS. Say whatever you like about it, I'd like to see any other system beat it.

Another is that we have two friends with more moderate unilateral hearing loss and not only are they people I like and admire, but Alex knows them both as well and hadn't even realised one had any problem hearing.

It's stupid, isn't it, having to say even that? Because it's not as if I think being deaf - or having unilateral hearing loss - has anything to do with a person's ability. I think it's just having to accept the premise that there might be anything less than perfect about our little bunny.