Dear Shrey, today you are 14 months and 7 days old. You can sign about 11 words, understand close to 30 words, your favorite expression is a frown which slowly melts into a smile, it’s so unique and so you. You love to throw and chase things, you enjoy the mess you make and at 14 months, you are already running around the house. You love books and will hold up mommy’s hand to sign them to you. You love to pull your sister’s hair and point to papa when asked, ‘Where is didi?’. You wake up in the morning pointing at things, wanting mumma to tell you all about everything. I noticed 2 days ago that you dance to the music and love all the things with lights and sounds. When we go out, you want to throw your charm at anyone within a 10 feet radius. You are one happy baby and you light up our world.
You also happen to be deaf. And what a journey it has been! You have broken all the parenting norms for us. These past 14 months, not only have we raised a baby, we’ve done so while learning a new language, exploring a new world and meeting a diversity of people greater than what I have met in the rest of my lifetime put together. I am still learning new things every single day. You’ve made your sister want to have her own set of CI processors and question mommy if her dangler earrings are hearing aids too. Your cousins and grandparents are having a hard time keeping up with your signing. Make no mistake, it’s been no fairytale. We’ve been through many sleepless nights, lived through uncertainties and unanswered questions, made it through a surgery while almost holding our breath and the endless string of appointments is not ending anytime soon. It has been hard and harrowing. However the cheer and joy that you’ve brought to us is how I choose to tell this story.
But why do I choose to tell this story at all? The day I found out that you were deaf, I did not cry and I did not sleep. I stayed up all night not knowing what to think or what to do. I was numb. And then in the dead of the night I went to the internet and started to search. I found blogs and stories by parents who had been through an experience similar to ours and described their journey. I read them all end to end, looking for answers, trying to define the unknowns. In the months to follow I would go back to them often and sometimes I could sleep just because of the reassurance I found reading their stories. Stories that have the power to make a difference deserve to be told.