Corrina's hearing adventure begins

Greeting all, from our 100% hearing family! In the above picture Corrina is hooked up to the software on the computer while the audiologist sends impulses to the electrodes on her implant in order to find a comfortable setting for her brain (my description of this process is sorely lacking because I hardly understand the procedure myself). In the below picture Corrina is playing, and yes her processor is on, and she is listening (has been for awhile at this point)!


I am going to keep this short because I have some house work and preparation for tomorrow's day of hearing and play to get done, and my feet are aching from this long day (thus I probably won't be answering all the question you have; do leave a comment if you want to know something more specific).
In the below picture Corrina is "live" which means her microphone is turned on and she is hearing everyone!

Corrina's activation was mellow. We turned her on and she did not cry, she did not laugh. She sorta just stilled for a moment, moved her eyes around and then started waving at everyone in the room and continued with her play. It was odd indeed. We were expecting a much more observable difference between deaf and hearing, however all throughout the day Dave and I kept asking each other "She is hearing right, her processor is turned on, everything is in place and she hears us right??" A few times we saw her stop and sorta listen for a noise, but mostly she just played like she usually does and we jabbered in her ear more than we usually.
But, this is NORMAL. We have to keep telling ourselves that. It takes children a little time and lots of instruction to learn to look towards noises when they have been deaf. They do not retain the newborn instincts that cause them to startle at the sound of a loud noise. Corrina was a little more interested the phone because the buttons made noise, and once we saw her turned toward Dave when he started talking, but other than that we were doing a lot of directing. On Wednesday we will be in the sound booth with our audiologist to see her response to deliberate sounds. I think it is there that we will really see her respond because we remember her unresponsive behavior before. In the picture below you can see that we were sitting on the ground and playing while the electrode testing was taking place. Once we went "live" we put Corrina on Dave's lap so she could have comfort if needed!

Although the activation was mellow, we are glad about this because a calm, content transition means that Corrina is not having trouble integrating noise into her activity. She was very smiley and social during the entire morning as there were a number of friend we invited to participate! We are proud of who she is, the easy going spirit she has been given, and her love for life! (And we REALLY appreciate all our friends and extended family who showed up for this once-in-a-lifetime event!) She was super happy and excited to play. This kid loves her child sized tables (we are on the look out for one!) and couldn't wait to be unplugged from the computer so she could get to the table!

Tomorrow we are going to continue on. We'll keep you posted. Oh, and we all had cake together and I made lots of silly 'yummmmmm, mmmmm, good cake.. look fork' noises in her ear. She really just wanted to eat the cake! The staff at the clinic work hard to make the time a celebration, hence the cake!