Lilliana

Well, I've posted a lot about Em lately, so here's a catch up post on Lilli.

She is amazing! She turned 5 in December and thinks she really is a big girl now! She is a great big sister, loves to play pretend everything, is enjoying her gymnastics lessons, and getting ready for kindergarten in the fall.

(Speaking of, who knew how hard a decision it is to pick a school for your child! I will be so glad when August is here and the decision is made.)

My Sweet Valentines

2nd CI Surgery

Emmalyn had her second surgery on January 25th and it went perfect! No complications at all! Her recovery was much easier this time too. Glad to have those behind us.

9 months

Activation!

Emmalyn's 1st activation appointment was today and it went much better than expected! They were able to activate 8 electrodes which is exactly what we hoped for! She seemed to tolerate it well and even responded to "ah" and "ba-ba-ba" which she has never done on that side before. It will definitely be a long road and it may continue to be challenging because of her ossification, but we are excited to get the process started! We took a great video, but the file is really large, so we need to edit it before trying to upload. Hope to get that up soon.

In other news, it looks like Emmalyn will be having her second CI surgery pretty soon. We did another test on her left ear today and her hearing has continued to decline in that ear. We are a little concerned that she is losing the hearing she has because that ear is also ossifying, so we want to get the implant in as soon as possible.

1st CI Surgery

Emmalyn had her first cochlear implant surgery on December 14th. Before surgery she was pretty happy hanging out in the waiting room with Mom and Dad.

Then we headed back to the surgery prep room and she started to get hungry after many hours of no eating. The sweet nurses tried to distract her with a ride around the halls.

One last pic with mom before heading back to surgery.

Emmalyn did OK during surgery, but there were some unexpected complications. The surgeon discovered that her cochlea had ossified, which basically means it was becoming solid bone growth. This made it difficult to place the internal portion of the implant. Until her activation date, we won't really know how many electrodes we will be able to activate. We are hoping for at least 8. Ossification is something that is normally seen in children after they have experienced hearing loss caused by meningitis. Emmalyn has never had meningitis, so the ossification was very unusual and unexpected. After surgery they kept her in recovery for a while and then we were finally released to go home. Sweet baby did not feel very well and was still very drowsy from anesthesia and pain medication.

Once we got home, we settled in on the couch and stayed there for pretty much the next 24 hours. 

But by the next afternoon, Emmalyn was definitely feeling like herself again but was about tired of that silly hat.

8 months