Baha Hearing Implant

i don't know about hearing implants, but if you're dealing with inner ear specialist i would get his/her opinion. we may be dealing with the same choice in the future and honestly what people think or will think is the last thing on my mind. don't forget your son has one ear with complete deafness that means he will hear with the otehr ear which will help him process language. what he will also be dealing is background noise, while trying to process language. hearing aids, therefore, hearing implants are means to lessen this problem. also, there is an equipment you can get for him for classroom (hopefully for free through your school district) that isolates background noise for him. i am just running a blank right now on what's it's called, but something like FM system, like a radio transmitter that has a microphone hooked on the teacher with receiver at his end. that way he will solely be listening to the teacher while not being distracted by background noise.
as for BAHA implants, again, i haven't started my research yet, but get recommendations about what's the best in the market right now, now what will other kids say to him.
good luck

Hi there. We are in the midst of this decision. My son was born with a cupped ear and has moderate to severe conductive hearing loss in that ear. He has a speech and language delay, which some feel is not related to the hearing loss. He has seen a few audiologists and different recommendations have come up. The main thing here is that regardless what your son winds up with it's important to instill a good sense of self. Kids will pick on anything. We've never treated him differently, kids have come up to him and touched his ear and made comments. Our son just says it's broken and he can't hear. You know what happened? They left it at that and started to play. Kids just need to understand. They have a choice to leave or get to know him and that's ok. Because our son is now in school, we decided against this invasive procedure. He had a cat scan of the temporal bone to evaluate the status of his middle ear. Depending on the results, it may be repairable. At least we'll know what we're dealing with. It's different if he was completely deaf but he has a normal hearing ear. What our audiologist said was that our son is missing about 30% of what's going on around him, especially in a crowded or noisy situation. Some kids adapt and some need aids. Sounds like your son has a conductive hearing loss too. Depending on your school district once he's 3 you can have your son evaluated and if he qualifies for an Individual Education Plan aka IEP, that will help a lot. The main thing is, you are your son's advocate. He can't speak for himself, you have to. It's up to you to do some research and ask your audiologists about those options. Have your husband do some research too, since he's the one with issues. He needs to be a part of your son's hearing too. I hope this helps some. Good luck.

Have you spoken to any DEAF professionals? I would contact University of Riverside...In the Deaf and Hard of hearing Dept...they might be able to put you in contact with a DEAF adult who has had or has experience with the implant. And sign sign sign ...if you are not already...use sign language with your son. good luck :)

Hi! I'm not sure about the BAHA cochlear implant, but I do know about the Advanced Bionics implant. It is a great implant, in my personal opinion. As a former employee of the company, I can tell you that we had many of the patient's come in and share their story with us and many of them were children and very young- younger then 5. Their parents were very happy with the results and didn't think a lot of the actual look of it, but focused more on the quality of life their child had- hearing a song, or mommy's voice, a bird, a waterfall, etc. I do know the AB has kid designed implants a long with kid designed accessories making it more kid friendly. Along with all the benifits of giving your child the ability to hear, please keep in mind and be aware that sometimes there are complications- I'm not trying to scare you but it's a risk just like any other surgery or implant. Sometimes the device can stop working, or move and another surgery will most likely be needed- during which time, your son will not be able to hear- so learning sign language is always a good idea- it would be horrible to lose communication completely. I would suggest looking at all cochlear implants, going to their websites- most have an online community where patient's or potential patien's can ask questions and talk to one another to get more familiar with it. I hope this helps and good luck with making this decision. In the end, what you decide for your child is always right.
Good luck and take care,
H.