Here are videos of Seth on his journey to hearing! They're in chronological order from his fundraising video, through his activation, up to the videos of him learning to listen! Enjoy!
Welcome To Bentonville
2 days ago
Tuesday, October 16, 2026
El
You want to know about me? OK, settle in. I tend to ramble on. And on. Just warning you.
I'm 28 years old. I was born and raised in Indiana, and I hate the cold. Hate it. Did I mention the hate for the cold? I mean, I like to look at snow, but I don't like being cold, so...yeah. Hate the cold. I went to school in Fort Wayne except for a couple of years in high school we lived in Champaign, Illinois, and that place still holds very fond memories for me.
I'm terrible at all sports except for horseback riding, which I am very good at. Or used to be. Growing up I was very involved in the hunter/jumper circuit and basically lived at the barn. I always thought I'd compete and teach professionally, and I did teach lessons for a while after I aged out of juniors, but then life (read: five pregnancies) got in the way. In high school, I was pretty much a band geek, although I don't actually play an instrument. I was in the color guard, though, and therefore basically exclusively dated drummers in high school. Actually, I think I only dated drummers. My best friend from high school would probably remember that better than I would.
In high school, I was part of a very fancy club called JELKS. I know, it's an amazing name, and very original...it was the acronym for the first letter from each of our names. Our activities basically consisted of making fun of other people while pretending we were joking and sneaking around at night...not to drink or do drugs, but to TP our friends' houses and sidewalk chalk their driveways. And decorate their cars.And eat at IHOP. We also wrote very dramatically in a top secret notebook called...wait for it..."The Notebook" that we passed back and forth between each other, filling it up with long, painfully melodramatic prose about living through a break up even though he was your soulmate or how we disapproved of something. Boys always tried to steal The Notebook to find out who we liked, so we had to make up code names for the ones we talked about. We also made up a lot of random dances that we would perform spontaneously at red lights after jumping out of the car.
In college, I tried to go to school at the same time as working a really demanding job at Abercrombie and Fitch, with middling success. Are you done laughing? I was serious. I was promoted to store manager really quickly and it was insanely hard, mostly because I was 18 or 19 and in charge of other managers much older than me. I pretty much had to be a complete jerk. And let's not even get into what it was like to be in charge of a bunch of 17 year olds who were totally hired for their looks. It was both the most entertaining and hardest job I'd ever had, and I pretty much worked all the time. Literally.
I met my husband while running a group interview at Hollister one day, and he basically followed me around until I agreed to start dating him. It was maybe more romantic than that, but that was the gist of it. We had a great time together, and that was basically that. It wasn't long before we were married, moved to Florida, and had our first baby, Ava. She totally rocked both of our worlds in the greatest possible way, and that could be why just five months later we found ourselves expecting again, very unexpectedly.
That's when things started to get tough. My water broke, and Jace was born prematurely. He contracted pneumonia. He was unable to breathe without the help of a ventilator. 23 years of age, John and I were completely blindsided...it had never even crossed our minds that babies were born unhealthy. Luckily, Jace recovered fully and went on to come home from the hospital a couple of weeks later with no issues. He's been keeping us running ever since.
I loved having two kids so close in age. I had never experienced anything different, so I thought it was easy. My husband was great with them both, and it was a really fun time in our lives. We had great friends and always had a blast getting out and about with the babies and having dinner parties with our friends, putting all of our kids down in pack n plays and getting a chance to hang out and decompress together.
About a year after Jace was born, we started talking about having a third baby. Apparently all we needed to do was talk about it, because we found out within weeks that we were, in fact, expecting number three. This time, things were tough from the beginning. I went on bed rest at nineteen weeks due to pre-term labor and was admitted to the hospital at 30 weeks for lots of magnesium sulfate and other drugs to stop labor. We held things off until 35 weeks, when our son, Eli, died very unexpectedly after my water broke. Once again, my husband and I were dealing with something we had never even realized actually happened in everyday life. Losing our son was the hardest thing I've ever gone through, until recently, and I spent months in a fog. All I wanted was another baby...not to replace Eli, but to fill my empty arms. After several months of trying to conceive, we were finally expecting once again.
My pregnancy with Seth was the absolute best pregnancy I've ever had. We found a treatment plan that worked great for me, so I had no early labor at all, and spent my entire pregnancy feeling great. We were all surprised when (wait for it!) my water broke at 34 weeks. Seth was born crying, and it was one of the best moments I remember. Everyone in the room was crying, including my OB and random nurses, as we finally welcomed another living baby.
Seth followed right in Jace's footsteps, and he was soon in the NICU on a ventilator. He had about a million complications and ended up losing his hearing due to a very strong antibiotic he was on. When Seth was just a few weeks old, we found out that he was profoundly deaf.
That started out journey into learning about hearing loss and raising the money to help pay for our son's bilateral cochlear implant surgery, which he received when he was eight months of age. For some reason, I never doubted that everything would fall into place for Seth, and it did. Today he is a happy, mostly healthy baby boy who hears very, very well with the aid of his "jetpacks" as his sister's friends call them.
For me, it's been six years of back to back pregnancy and nursing and babies and health issues and exhaustion. I think I dealt with post partum depression multiple times, and in hindsight I'm amazed I was as functional as I was considering how out of whack all my emotions were. Once Seth's health issues were added to the mix, I became consumed with finding a way to help him. I wasn't going to fail him the way I felt likeol I'd failed Eli by not delivering him safely. I thought I would have time to focus on my marriage after Seth got older, got caught up, could hear.
Unfortunately, that wasn't an option for me. By the time Seth was turning one and finally turning a corner, my husband had already decided he was done waiting for me to pay attention to him, found someone who would, and moved out, regardless of the fact that I was expecting once again. It was the single biggest wake up call of my life, and the past five months without him have been both terrible and incredibly enlightening.
There are lots of things I've learned about myself since my husband left that I wouldn't take back. There are many things that I've done that I thought I'd never be able to do on my own, and I have. I'm proud of myself and the way I've handled things since he left. I never ever thought I would be here. I thought he was the person I would be with forever, and I still have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I'm s divorced single mom. I'm angry, and sad, and frustrated, and upset and relieved and happy to be with my kids and I tend to vacillate through all those emotions daily, which is lots of fun, let me tell you! Luckily, as time goes on, I am also happy, and content, and thrilled to have my kids to get me through even though this is a season I would never, ever have asked for.
On Thanksgiving night, my water broke, and on November 30th, my daughter, Evany, was born at 32 weeks by emergency C-Section. She was in distress and they needed to get her out right away. She's been so blessed...she was released from the NICU after just 11 days, and once again, I can't imagine life without this little girl. I'd go through it all again to get her out of it.
So basically that's where I am at this point in my life. waiting on God to make the purpose of all of this clear, to bring something redeeming from this mess. I don't know where we'll go from here, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that my kids are great, godly kids who understand what family means, and really, what else could I ask for?
This was supposed to be about me, and the funny thing is, it was all about my kids, and my husband. I think it's so easy to lose our identities in our families as women, that our call to nurture and care for our families can swallow us whole sometimes. I'm looking forward to finding out who I am again someday, but in the meantime, I'm okay with being defined by my family. I mean really, what is more important than that?
I'm 28 years old. I was born and raised in Indiana, and I hate the cold. Hate it. Did I mention the hate for the cold? I mean, I like to look at snow, but I don't like being cold, so...yeah. Hate the cold. I went to school in Fort Wayne except for a couple of years in high school we lived in Champaign, Illinois, and that place still holds very fond memories for me.
I'm terrible at all sports except for horseback riding, which I am very good at. Or used to be. Growing up I was very involved in the hunter/jumper circuit and basically lived at the barn. I always thought I'd compete and teach professionally, and I did teach lessons for a while after I aged out of juniors, but then life (read: five pregnancies) got in the way. In high school, I was pretty much a band geek, although I don't actually play an instrument. I was in the color guard, though, and therefore basically exclusively dated drummers in high school. Actually, I think I only dated drummers. My best friend from high school would probably remember that better than I would.
In high school, I was part of a very fancy club called JELKS. I know, it's an amazing name, and very original...it was the acronym for the first letter from each of our names. Our activities basically consisted of making fun of other people while pretending we were joking and sneaking around at night...not to drink or do drugs, but to TP our friends' houses and sidewalk chalk their driveways. And decorate their cars.And eat at IHOP. We also wrote very dramatically in a top secret notebook called...wait for it..."The Notebook" that we passed back and forth between each other, filling it up with long, painfully melodramatic prose about living through a break up even though he was your soulmate or how we disapproved of something. Boys always tried to steal The Notebook to find out who we liked, so we had to make up code names for the ones we talked about. We also made up a lot of random dances that we would perform spontaneously at red lights after jumping out of the car.
In college, I tried to go to school at the same time as working a really demanding job at Abercrombie and Fitch, with middling success. Are you done laughing? I was serious. I was promoted to store manager really quickly and it was insanely hard, mostly because I was 18 or 19 and in charge of other managers much older than me. I pretty much had to be a complete jerk. And let's not even get into what it was like to be in charge of a bunch of 17 year olds who were totally hired for their looks. It was both the most entertaining and hardest job I'd ever had, and I pretty much worked all the time. Literally.
I met my husband while running a group interview at Hollister one day, and he basically followed me around until I agreed to start dating him. It was maybe more romantic than that, but that was the gist of it. We had a great time together, and that was basically that. It wasn't long before we were married, moved to Florida, and had our first baby, Ava. She totally rocked both of our worlds in the greatest possible way, and that could be why just five months later we found ourselves expecting again, very unexpectedly.
That's when things started to get tough. My water broke, and Jace was born prematurely. He contracted pneumonia. He was unable to breathe without the help of a ventilator. 23 years of age, John and I were completely blindsided...it had never even crossed our minds that babies were born unhealthy. Luckily, Jace recovered fully and went on to come home from the hospital a couple of weeks later with no issues. He's been keeping us running ever since.
I loved having two kids so close in age. I had never experienced anything different, so I thought it was easy. My husband was great with them both, and it was a really fun time in our lives. We had great friends and always had a blast getting out and about with the babies and having dinner parties with our friends, putting all of our kids down in pack n plays and getting a chance to hang out and decompress together.
About a year after Jace was born, we started talking about having a third baby. Apparently all we needed to do was talk about it, because we found out within weeks that we were, in fact, expecting number three. This time, things were tough from the beginning. I went on bed rest at nineteen weeks due to pre-term labor and was admitted to the hospital at 30 weeks for lots of magnesium sulfate and other drugs to stop labor. We held things off until 35 weeks, when our son, Eli, died very unexpectedly after my water broke. Once again, my husband and I were dealing with something we had never even realized actually happened in everyday life. Losing our son was the hardest thing I've ever gone through, until recently, and I spent months in a fog. All I wanted was another baby...not to replace Eli, but to fill my empty arms. After several months of trying to conceive, we were finally expecting once again.
My pregnancy with Seth was the absolute best pregnancy I've ever had. We found a treatment plan that worked great for me, so I had no early labor at all, and spent my entire pregnancy feeling great. We were all surprised when (wait for it!) my water broke at 34 weeks. Seth was born crying, and it was one of the best moments I remember. Everyone in the room was crying, including my OB and random nurses, as we finally welcomed another living baby.
Seth followed right in Jace's footsteps, and he was soon in the NICU on a ventilator. He had about a million complications and ended up losing his hearing due to a very strong antibiotic he was on. When Seth was just a few weeks old, we found out that he was profoundly deaf.
That started out journey into learning about hearing loss and raising the money to help pay for our son's bilateral cochlear implant surgery, which he received when he was eight months of age. For some reason, I never doubted that everything would fall into place for Seth, and it did. Today he is a happy, mostly healthy baby boy who hears very, very well with the aid of his "jetpacks" as his sister's friends call them.
For me, it's been six years of back to back pregnancy and nursing and babies and health issues and exhaustion. I think I dealt with post partum depression multiple times, and in hindsight I'm amazed I was as functional as I was considering how out of whack all my emotions were. Once Seth's health issues were added to the mix, I became consumed with finding a way to help him. I wasn't going to fail him the way I felt likeol I'd failed Eli by not delivering him safely. I thought I would have time to focus on my marriage after Seth got older, got caught up, could hear.
Unfortunately, that wasn't an option for me. By the time Seth was turning one and finally turning a corner, my husband had already decided he was done waiting for me to pay attention to him, found someone who would, and moved out, regardless of the fact that I was expecting once again. It was the single biggest wake up call of my life, and the past five months without him have been both terrible and incredibly enlightening.
There are lots of things I've learned about myself since my husband left that I wouldn't take back. There are many things that I've done that I thought I'd never be able to do on my own, and I have. I'm proud of myself and the way I've handled things since he left. I never ever thought I would be here. I thought he was the person I would be with forever, and I still have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I'm s divorced single mom. I'm angry, and sad, and frustrated, and upset and relieved and happy to be with my kids and I tend to vacillate through all those emotions daily, which is lots of fun, let me tell you! Luckily, as time goes on, I am also happy, and content, and thrilled to have my kids to get me through even though this is a season I would never, ever have asked for.
On Thanksgiving night, my water broke, and on November 30th, my daughter, Evany, was born at 32 weeks by emergency C-Section. She was in distress and they needed to get her out right away. She's been so blessed...she was released from the NICU after just 11 days, and once again, I can't imagine life without this little girl. I'd go through it all again to get her out of it.
So basically that's where I am at this point in my life. waiting on God to make the purpose of all of this clear, to bring something redeeming from this mess. I don't know where we'll go from here, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that my kids are great, godly kids who understand what family means, and really, what else could I ask for?
This was supposed to be about me, and the funny thing is, it was all about my kids, and my husband. I think it's so easy to lose our identities in our families as women, that our call to nurture and care for our families can swallow us whole sometimes. I'm looking forward to finding out who I am again someday, but in the meantime, I'm okay with being defined by my family. I mean really, what is more important than that?
Carseat Safety
I'm a Child Passenger Safety Technician. That means I've gone through training and become certified to educate families and parents on the best ways to keep their kids safe in the car. Car accidents are the number one killer of kids in the USA, so keeping them safe in the car is really, really important. Add that to the fact that about 8 out of 10 carseats are installed incorrectly, usually accidentally, and you can probably understand why I feel so passionate about keeping kids safe in cars.
Here are some posts I have written about carseats and carseat safety. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me!
FINALLY! Extended Rear Facing
My Love Affair with Carseats
Carseat Q & A
Carseat Conundrum: Infant Seats
Here are some posts I have written about carseats and carseat safety. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me!
FINALLY! Extended Rear Facing
My Love Affair with Carseats
Carseat Q & A
Carseat Conundrum: Infant Seats
Stillbirth
Our third child and second son, Robert Elias McCall, died just before he was born. I have never been through an experience as terrifying as laboring and delivering him was. Would I be able to look at him, hold him, love him even though he was already gone?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
There was absolutely nothing different about Eli than our other children when he was born except that he wasn't breathing. We were incredibly blessed to spend several hours memorizing his black curls, his pointed chin, his long feet, and his slender fingers. We were able to bathe him, christen him, sing lullabies to him.
Then, when it was time, we dressed him and watched the nurses wheel him away. I would never see him again.
Not many people talk about stillbirth. In fact, many people equate it to being the same thing as a miscarriage. It's not. Miscarriages are terrible, horrible experiences. I know the most terrible thing about miscarriage is usually the fact that you never get to meet your baby, never get to find out if they were a boy or girl. But with a stillborn baby, you know. You've spent eight or nine months planning for this baby to join your household. In our case, we left the house giddy with joy about meeting our son, and were then told that the baby who had been kicking moments before was gone. What was supposed to be a joyous day turned ugly in a moment. You leave the hospital and go home to a house with a nursery all set up for your baby, filled with clothes and toys and furniture that they'll never get to use.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can prepare you to watch your child leave you for good. There is nothing that can prepare you for making calls to the funeral home instead of excited friends and relatives. There is nothing that can prepare you for the days and weeks and months and years after you've said goodbye, when it feels like you're the only one who remembers your baby.
There's nothing I can say to prepare you, except to say that you should take every opportunity to commemorate your baby. Make footprint casts. Call a photographer from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep to get professional portraits taken. Spend every minute you need and do not let anyone tell you when time is up. When you decide it's time to let go, remember to keep ever memento you can. Even if they're too painful to look at right away, there will come a time you're glad to have them.
When you go home, remember there is no right or wrong way to grieve your baby. If throwing yourself back into the swing of things is what gets you by, do it. If hibernating for a while feels right, that's okay, too. Our family took a vacation to New York City just a day after Eli was born. We wanted to be somewhere we could be sad by ourselves. We wanted to be in a place where no one knew us and where there was a lot going on so that we could try to enjoy ourselves when we could. It was one of the most bittersweet experiences of my life, and we now celebrate Eli's birthday every year by taking a trip to New York City. It's his place, the place I feel him most, even though he's never been there.
If you're reading this because you know someone who is going through a stillbirth or infant loss, remember that everyone helps in the beginning. In many cases, the shock doesn't wear off for a while, and the real support is needed weeks or months down the road. Remember that the family didn't just lose their newborn, they lost the one year old, five year old, fifteen year old that baby would have become. There are innumerable layers of grief, and I am still shocked and surprised by them at times, almost three years since his death.
Most of all, I want to tell you that if you can find something to do in honor of your baby, that might be the most healing thing of all. After Eli's death, I became a child passenger safety technician. Every family I educate, every carseat I install, is done in his name, and I know that lives have been saved because children have been safer in the car because of me and of him.
Another really important thing for me has been continuing to talk about Eli, to keep his memory alive even after years have gone by. Sometimes it's awkward, and I can tell it make people feel bad, and that makes me feel bad. But Eli is just as real, just as important as any of my other children, and he deserves to be remembered right along with them. The missing step in my stairsteps is painfully obvious to me, and talking about him, sharing his story, it helps. Especially when his story makes a difference in someone's life, whether that means they tell their OB when they have a bad feeling about their pregnancy, or they appreciate the children they have more, or they come closer in their relationship with Christ because of him.
I will never believe that God wanted us to lose our son. I know that He has wept right along with us as we've grieved him. But I do strongly believe that God is bringing joy from the ashes, that he is making Eli a lasting, beautiful legacy. Eli, in his too short life here on earth, has done more than many people do with a lot more years to work with.
If you have or you know someone who is going through a stillbirth or poor prenatal diagnosis, or who has lost a baby, please feel free to contact me. I would love to talk. There is no rhyme or reason most of the time, and these things truly can and do happen to anyone. It sucks. There is no way to be ready or to get over it, but it is possible to grow from the experience, and I know that my kids and I have all been blessed beyond measure by my son and their brother.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
There was absolutely nothing different about Eli than our other children when he was born except that he wasn't breathing. We were incredibly blessed to spend several hours memorizing his black curls, his pointed chin, his long feet, and his slender fingers. We were able to bathe him, christen him, sing lullabies to him.
Then, when it was time, we dressed him and watched the nurses wheel him away. I would never see him again.
Not many people talk about stillbirth. In fact, many people equate it to being the same thing as a miscarriage. It's not. Miscarriages are terrible, horrible experiences. I know the most terrible thing about miscarriage is usually the fact that you never get to meet your baby, never get to find out if they were a boy or girl. But with a stillborn baby, you know. You've spent eight or nine months planning for this baby to join your household. In our case, we left the house giddy with joy about meeting our son, and were then told that the baby who had been kicking moments before was gone. What was supposed to be a joyous day turned ugly in a moment. You leave the hospital and go home to a house with a nursery all set up for your baby, filled with clothes and toys and furniture that they'll never get to use.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can prepare you to watch your child leave you for good. There is nothing that can prepare you for making calls to the funeral home instead of excited friends and relatives. There is nothing that can prepare you for the days and weeks and months and years after you've said goodbye, when it feels like you're the only one who remembers your baby.
There's nothing I can say to prepare you, except to say that you should take every opportunity to commemorate your baby. Make footprint casts. Call a photographer from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep to get professional portraits taken. Spend every minute you need and do not let anyone tell you when time is up. When you decide it's time to let go, remember to keep ever memento you can. Even if they're too painful to look at right away, there will come a time you're glad to have them.
When you go home, remember there is no right or wrong way to grieve your baby. If throwing yourself back into the swing of things is what gets you by, do it. If hibernating for a while feels right, that's okay, too. Our family took a vacation to New York City just a day after Eli was born. We wanted to be somewhere we could be sad by ourselves. We wanted to be in a place where no one knew us and where there was a lot going on so that we could try to enjoy ourselves when we could. It was one of the most bittersweet experiences of my life, and we now celebrate Eli's birthday every year by taking a trip to New York City. It's his place, the place I feel him most, even though he's never been there.
If you're reading this because you know someone who is going through a stillbirth or infant loss, remember that everyone helps in the beginning. In many cases, the shock doesn't wear off for a while, and the real support is needed weeks or months down the road. Remember that the family didn't just lose their newborn, they lost the one year old, five year old, fifteen year old that baby would have become. There are innumerable layers of grief, and I am still shocked and surprised by them at times, almost three years since his death.
Most of all, I want to tell you that if you can find something to do in honor of your baby, that might be the most healing thing of all. After Eli's death, I became a child passenger safety technician. Every family I educate, every carseat I install, is done in his name, and I know that lives have been saved because children have been safer in the car because of me and of him.
Another really important thing for me has been continuing to talk about Eli, to keep his memory alive even after years have gone by. Sometimes it's awkward, and I can tell it make people feel bad, and that makes me feel bad. But Eli is just as real, just as important as any of my other children, and he deserves to be remembered right along with them. The missing step in my stairsteps is painfully obvious to me, and talking about him, sharing his story, it helps. Especially when his story makes a difference in someone's life, whether that means they tell their OB when they have a bad feeling about their pregnancy, or they appreciate the children they have more, or they come closer in their relationship with Christ because of him.
I will never believe that God wanted us to lose our son. I know that He has wept right along with us as we've grieved him. But I do strongly believe that God is bringing joy from the ashes, that he is making Eli a lasting, beautiful legacy. Eli, in his too short life here on earth, has done more than many people do with a lot more years to work with.
If you have or you know someone who is going through a stillbirth or poor prenatal diagnosis, or who has lost a baby, please feel free to contact me. I would love to talk. There is no rhyme or reason most of the time, and these things truly can and do happen to anyone. It sucks. There is no way to be ready or to get over it, but it is possible to grow from the experience, and I know that my kids and I have all been blessed beyond measure by my son and their brother.
Hearing Loss
Our fourth child and third son, Seth, was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss when he was just two weeks old. A few months later, a diagnosis of Auditory Neuropathy got thrown in, just for kicks.
After a lot of soul searching and prayer, we decided to pursue cochlear implantation for Seth. A cochlear implant basically takes over for the hearing functions of the ear by way of an electrode array inserted in the cochlea, a computer chip that is embedded in the skull, and a magnet that connects the whole shebang to a processor on the outside. Somehow, and I'll spare you all the technical jargon, this means my son can hear.
Really well, in fact. Our son was implanted bilaterally at eight months of age, activated a month later, and he was caught up in language development to his hearing peers before his first birthday. Lots of work on listening and talking mean that now he is still hanging in there at an age appropriate level. In fact, he has no delays and he hears at a completely normal level.
Except for when the CIs come of, of course. Then, he is just as deaf as ever. It's a strange world to live in, straddling the line between hearing and deafness, and there is a very special place in my heart for families going through the same things we did. It's both the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done. It was terribly hard deciding to do what amounted to an elective surgery on our son, when I knew firsthand so many culturally Deaf people who have been extremely successful. But in the end, we are a hearing family, and I never wanted Seth to be left out of that. Seeing how he has blossomed and grown since his activation has been nothing but proof to me that we did the right thing for our family and for Seth. Of course, if Seth decides at some point in his life that he wants to go without the processors, that's fine, too. He's my son, and I love him whether he can hear or not.
There are many resources that have helped me along this journey, and I wanted to share them here. I also want to encourage anyone who is working through a diagnosis of their child or trying to decide of CIs are right for them to email me. I would love to learn about your family! The greatest thing about this whole ride has been the amazing people I have met and grown to love.
The John Tracy Clinic has an amazing distance learning program for families to teach their children with hearing loss. There are activities for everyone, from very young babies to older children. It's an awesome go to guide when you're tapped out of new ideas, too!
Our surgeon, Loren Bartels from Tampa Bay Hearing and Balance was an amazing support to us. He was never more than a phone call or email away, and he went to the mat for us to get Seth his implants early and all at once. Many kids are still implanted one eat at a time and after twelve months of age, and we were incredibly blessed to have an amazing Christian surgeon who understood our views was not afraid to fight for Seth's surgery date.
I love our Audiologist and Therapy Team more than life itself. I am thrilled to be a part of All Children's Hospital's Auditory Based Care program and consider everyone who has gone through this with us true friends.
I have to say that one of the relationships I have been most blessed by has been completely unexpected. When you're picking an implant brand, the people behind that brand don't really come into focus for you. It's all about technology and reliability and so on and so forth. When we picked Advanced Bionics as Seth's implant manufacturer, we knew he was going to be "married" to the technology for life and we were okay with that. What I didn't know was that I would fall in love with every person I met from the company and be blessed to actually become a part of their program mentoring cochlear implant candidates through their Hearing Journey website. Seth has also been able to test upcoming products for the company and we have been able to become close to many other AB recipients and their families, which has perhaps been the greatest part of all. Aside from him hearing, of course.
Some other great places to get information and support for cochlear implants and hearing loss are CI Circle and Let Them Hear.
After a lot of soul searching and prayer, we decided to pursue cochlear implantation for Seth. A cochlear implant basically takes over for the hearing functions of the ear by way of an electrode array inserted in the cochlea, a computer chip that is embedded in the skull, and a magnet that connects the whole shebang to a processor on the outside. Somehow, and I'll spare you all the technical jargon, this means my son can hear.
Really well, in fact. Our son was implanted bilaterally at eight months of age, activated a month later, and he was caught up in language development to his hearing peers before his first birthday. Lots of work on listening and talking mean that now he is still hanging in there at an age appropriate level. In fact, he has no delays and he hears at a completely normal level.
Except for when the CIs come of, of course. Then, he is just as deaf as ever. It's a strange world to live in, straddling the line between hearing and deafness, and there is a very special place in my heart for families going through the same things we did. It's both the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done. It was terribly hard deciding to do what amounted to an elective surgery on our son, when I knew firsthand so many culturally Deaf people who have been extremely successful. But in the end, we are a hearing family, and I never wanted Seth to be left out of that. Seeing how he has blossomed and grown since his activation has been nothing but proof to me that we did the right thing for our family and for Seth. Of course, if Seth decides at some point in his life that he wants to go without the processors, that's fine, too. He's my son, and I love him whether he can hear or not.
There are many resources that have helped me along this journey, and I wanted to share them here. I also want to encourage anyone who is working through a diagnosis of their child or trying to decide of CIs are right for them to email me. I would love to learn about your family! The greatest thing about this whole ride has been the amazing people I have met and grown to love.
The John Tracy Clinic has an amazing distance learning program for families to teach their children with hearing loss. There are activities for everyone, from very young babies to older children. It's an awesome go to guide when you're tapped out of new ideas, too!
Our surgeon, Loren Bartels from Tampa Bay Hearing and Balance was an amazing support to us. He was never more than a phone call or email away, and he went to the mat for us to get Seth his implants early and all at once. Many kids are still implanted one eat at a time and after twelve months of age, and we were incredibly blessed to have an amazing Christian surgeon who understood our views was not afraid to fight for Seth's surgery date.
I love our Audiologist and Therapy Team more than life itself. I am thrilled to be a part of All Children's Hospital's Auditory Based Care program and consider everyone who has gone through this with us true friends.
I have to say that one of the relationships I have been most blessed by has been completely unexpected. When you're picking an implant brand, the people behind that brand don't really come into focus for you. It's all about technology and reliability and so on and so forth. When we picked Advanced Bionics as Seth's implant manufacturer, we knew he was going to be "married" to the technology for life and we were okay with that. What I didn't know was that I would fall in love with every person I met from the company and be blessed to actually become a part of their program mentoring cochlear implant candidates through their Hearing Journey website. Seth has also been able to test upcoming products for the company and we have been able to become close to many other AB recipients and their families, which has perhaps been the greatest part of all. Aside from him hearing, of course.
Some other great places to get information and support for cochlear implants and hearing loss are CI Circle and Let Them Hear.
Contact Us
Have a question, comment, or random fact to share? I love emails, read them all, and try my best to respond to every one!
Contact me at: ellyn (at) profoundlyseth (dot) com
Contact me at: ellyn (at) profoundlyseth (dot) com
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