Back to Speech

I’ve been super out of order in writing Sutton’s story and ever blogging… forgive me! Moving, having a baby, working, etc. can get in the way. Maybe I will make a new years resolution to actually blog….

Where to begin? Back in 2019 I suppose. It feels like a lifetime ago. When we first were suspecting some type of hearing loss in Sutton we were referred to Babynet, which is a fabulous resource in South Carolina that provided us with a case manager, a speech language pathologist, and a Deaf/Hard of Hearing parent coach. Before Sutton was even officially diagnosed with hearing loss, they were able to set us up with services free of charge. We began our speech journey with an SLP named Maria who came to our house. She played games with Sutton while I sat and watched on, often holding a 3 month old Sloane. Maria was very sweet and an experienced SLP, and she even braved the telehealth revolution when COVID-19 swept the world. That was a “fun” time, chasing a 2.5 year old with hearing loss around the house with an iPad with an SLP on the other end trying to finish a session- ah the memories!

Once Sutton was officially diagnosed with hearing loss, I was becoming more educated on the world of AVT-auditory verbal therapy. This is a different type of speech therapy- where certified AVT’s have gone through additional hours and years of training to take a different approach with those who have hearing loss and use devices to hear. (That’s an entirely separate book/blog post). We desperately wanted to see an AVT, but there was only one practicing in our area, and she was on her way to retirement. Our wonderful pediatric audiology team at Lakeside put in a special call for us, and we got in with Margaret- Sutton’s very first AVT certified speech therapist. Margaret was wonderful. She was no-nonsense, but also clearly knew her stuff- AND had a big heart for kids with hearing loss. We saw Margaret faithfully every Thursday. When I started teaching again in the fall of 2020 (another blog post), our nanny team would bring Sutton and Sloane to my school in Fort Mill, give me Sutton, deal with poor 1 year old Sloaney’s tears over seeing mommy and then not getting to go with us, and then I would drive Sutton about 30 more min to get to Margaret’s office in Charlotte. Then, we would work hard for an hour- all while wearing masks!!!! Dang Covid. After speech we would pick up Chipotle from the Pineville location and drive home, back to Rock Hill (pre-chipotle in the thrill days)- often getting stuck in traffic. At that point Dave would be home with Sloaney and we would watch the videos I took of Sutton at the sessions. I credit Margaret with much of the knowledge I have and progress Sutton gained over that year of therapy while she was using hearing aids, going through CI surgery, and the subsequent activation in 2021.

When we moved to Miami- we found out that the UM Children’s Hearing Program had multiple AVT’s on staff. Also- the oral language school she would be attending (The Debbie School) had two AVT’s as well! We knew when we moved to Miami she would be in great hands, not only did Sutton get 90 minutes of AVT at school, we also saw her UM AVT therapist, Domi in the clinic for an extra hour each week every Tuesday morning. This was Sutton’s entire first year of having both ears activated with CI’s. Then, when we switched Sutton to mainstream public school, we continued to see Domi, and Sutton started on her IEP goals with a school-based SLP (Thanks Ms. G!) at her elementary school.

During Sutton’s mainstream Pre-K, we transitioned to telehealth with Domi to save us on driving about an hour both ways to the UM Children’s hearing office, and Domi eventually graduated Sutton from AVT, which led us to her only doing speech therapy at school focusing only on educational goals.

Over the last year our family has moved, added a new baby, and did not have time to add in an extra speech appointment privately. Sutton has continued to see a wonderful SLP at her new school- but speech at school is in a group setting and only focuses on IEP/educational goals. As we established care with our new AuD here in Louisville, we opted to set up a speech eval with their team. For those that don’t know, I work as a DHH teacher now, and I actually serve some students who have bilateral cochlear implants, like Sutton. One of my students is in middle school and has the most gorgeous speech- especially considering they were born deaf and use CI’s for access to speech and language. This particular student told me they had been doing speech therapy their entire life- and this motivated me to want Sutton to reach further.

Just this week had her first private speech session and we got to know her new SLP. I sat there in my seemingly thousandth hour of speech therapy with her (AVT speech requires the parent to be an active participant), and I marveled at my now 7 year old bilateral cochlear implant user. During the session she answered questions, chatted, and used advanced communication skills. I was so proud of her. She is truly amazing. Sometimes I forget she is deaf, and sometimes I forget how hard she has worked to get to this point.

Toward the end of the session our new SLP took a minute to look at me and congratulate us on how much we have worked with Sutton. I was taken aback because I truly don’t take the time to stop and think at how much time, work, sacrifice, and effort we have put into achieving our goals for her. I guess what I am reflecting on here is that I am just really proud of us. I’m proud of her, obviously, but thanks to her new SLP, I’m taking a moment to be proud of me, too.

The sky is the limit for her, back to speech we go!