Juan Scheepers - Cochlear Implant » During preganancy

Second Mapping Session.

Hennie & Tria — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:11:10 +0000

Today was our second mapping session for the cochlear implant. The past two weeks, we could really start seeing that Juan is definitely hearing something. He starts looking for where the sound may come from. Every time we put the cochlear implant on in the mornings, he would take a sudden deep breath, and then he we start chatting with himself.

I must say I am really relieved to see something is working. Apparently it’s quite hard to tell at this stage how much he is hearing, or better said: how much his brain is relating to ’sound’.
I can really see progress every single day.

What’s more, eversins Juan got his implant, he started leopard crawling, and today he got up on all fours and started creeping!!!!

The audiologist is extremely happy with his response to sound. Today they tested the nerve ‘ response levels’ again– which they have done in theater the last time. They test this at three months and then again at six months to make sure the mapping correlates with the nerve response levels. Apparently, after six months, the nerve response levels stabilizes and then they have a good idea as to where the nerves start responding to sound which will then indicate what the level of the sound should be.

All very technical, but most important, Juan is making progress, he’s crying when something is too loud– and that is very good! Jippieeee.

What went wrong during preganacy

Hennie & Tria — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:30:50 +0000

Everything went well for the first 14 weeks. The suddenly Juan’s growth rate started to decrease and he rapidly fell behind the normal development schedule for his age. At the time we didn’t know what the cause was (we’ll never be 100% sure), this continued for 8 weeks. Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped and Juan started to grow again.

Eventually he was born after a near full term pregnancy, but he weighed only 2.2kg at birth. Despite his age, he was a strong and healthy baby.

A MRI and CT scan of the brain is done as part of the screening for a cochlea implant. The scans revealed that Juan somehow did not get enough oxygen during this 8 weeks and as a result lost his hearing.

Juan – The Beginning

Hennie & Tria — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:32:18 +0000

Tonight I’m sitting here wondering where to start with the story of Juan, the best place is probably the beginning. His life story starts on 22 May 2008 in Botswana, Mahubasehube, Camp site number 4 to be precise. We stayed there the first and second night of a short 4×4 trip we undertook to the Kalahari Transfrontier Park. If you do the maths it’ll come as no surprise that Juan was born 9 months later on 01 February 2009. Little did we know then what lies ahead.

A couple of weeks later Tria realised that she was pregnant. She’ll take it from here…