I almost didn?t take my son, Gus, for his infant hearing screening. The hospital nurse who was trained to use the screening equipment was off the day we took him home, and the pamphlet for the infant hearing program was just one of many pieces of paper we shoved in an envelope as we packed up our hospital room after he was born.
A couple of weeks later, when my mother arrived and freed up enough of my time to sort through the paperwork, I made the appointment. At this point, there was no indication Gus had hearing loss, so I was surprised at the appointment when the public health nurse told me she had to refer him to an audiologist. I asked, perhaps naively, how many kids she referred. Eight percent, she said, but a much smaller percentage actually had hearing loss. The odds were in our favour, as we had no family history, but we spent the next few weeks subtly testing his hearing and were relieved he noticed when the dog barked or something fell to the floor, and he smiled when we talked to him. It wasn?t until the audiologist walked us through Gus?s audiogram and explained that he struggles to hear high-frequency sounds, including many that are a part of speech, that we realized something was wrong. According to the Canadian Paediatric Society, approximately two in every 1,000 babies in Canada are born with some degree of hearing loss, making it one of the most common congenital disorders. The good news is that hearing loss can be easily diagnosed, and there are well-de...