An Introduction...Abigail Grace

I started this blog not only to serve as a tool to communicate with our families and friends about Abigail, but also to be a diary of our thoughts, struggles, triumphs and questions as we venture down this road. I think I will start at the beginning for those of you who may be frantically searching for any nugget of informaton at all ...



Abigail Grace was born at 37 weeks, 2 days on August 27, 2008. Abigail is my second child and my pregnancy was very healthy except for a run of pre-term labor at 34 weeks. My pre-term labor was stopped with the help of Procardia, a muscle relaxer giving to heart patients experiencing angina. It also has the added benefit of relaxing uterine contractions to calm down pre-term labor that is on the cusp of being considered full-term. After my contractions weakened, I was sent home on bed rest for the next two weeks until I reached 37 weeks. Only one day after my bed rest restriction was lifted, my contractions began again with purpose and we headed to the hospital.



I took no pain medication during labor, however, I was administered pitocin after my labor stalled at 6 cm. Just a few hours later, Abigail Grace entered the world and we heard her cry for the first time. Her Apgar scores were high and she breastfed right away. She was slightly jaundiced, but the pediatricians felt that we could simply watch her levels. The day that we were to be discharged we noticed a piece of paper in her bassinet that stated she had failed her newborn hearing screening test. I couldn't believe that no one had mentioned this to us, what did this mean, I became panicked as I searched for our nurse.



Our nurse told us that this was common and that babies fail the initial test a lot because of fluid in their ears. We were even told by the pediatrician on call not to worry because she had seen lots of babies fail their initial test, but had never seen a baby actually have hearing loss. I tried to forget about it and focus on the beautiful angel we were about to take home, but I couldn't get it out of mind. We had to wait three weeks for a follow-up screening test by an audiology nurse at Dayton Children's Hospital. It seemed like the longest three weeks of my life. I went alone with my daughter, trying to convince myself that this would soon be a distant memory. This was a mistake, as my worst fears were realized when she failed yet another screening test. The nurse tried to explain to me that this was just a screening and it didn't necessarily mean that Abigail had hearing loss. That didnt' matter to me, I was her mother and I just knew that my daughter could not hear. Emotion overcame me and I began to sob right there in front of the nurse. I was uncontrollable--maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but whatever the reason I could not get up out of that chair.



The nurse was not sure what to do, so she asked a pediatric audiologist to come speak with me. This was my first introduction to words like conductive, sensorineural, cochlea, ABR, etc. Now I was not only an emotional mess because I had no idea what Abigail's future would be like, but I was also overwhelmed with terms and causes and explanations regarding something I had never even remotely considered as being a factor in our lives. The pediatric audiologist scheduled Abigail for a number of tests including an ABR just two weeks later.