Finn Henry

Following his cousin Jimmy’s lead the Funster now has his bath in the adults bath and just splashes around in an inch or so of water. And boy does he splash!

Like it? He loves it.

Finn is quite vocal although it is all nonsense baby noises. One of the ones that comes out when he is especially cross sounds quite a lot like “baby”. And the one that means “I am having a lovely time” sounds like someone is throttling him (which I assure you they are not).

It is amazing how much they all sound like real speech sounds, doubly so because they tell us he might have trouble developing speech.

We’ll see. I think he’s pretty clever and haven’t seen anything yet to prove me wrong.

The Funster still has a spot of conjunctivitis in his eyes and cannot go back to child care until he is all better. The drop seemed to be doing the job but just today he seems to have slipped back which could be a nuisance.

Still we have Nicky’s mum to help out if need be so it’s not big drama.

We dropped the Funster and all his little things off at child care this morning at around 8.30.

He has bottled for feeds, a sleeping bag for sleep, extra clothes just in case and just stuff.

On my way back from Geelong I picked him up. They said we could call if we wanted to check how he was going but neither of us did. If he was going well that would have been good but if he was upset then we would have wanted to go and rescue him right away.

He didn’t need rescuing.

He had decent sized sleeps. He had heaps to eat. He was calm and happy when I picked him up and he gave me a big smile when I put him in the car.

In short all was well.

Finn really is a terrific kid. He hardly even chucks a tanty. He sleep well and eats well (when not gripped by the phaff). After a sleep he always has a smile all ready for you (and probably a fart of two as well).

I am sure some people struggle but we have landed on our feet with such a good little kid.

Last Tuesday we went back to the Royal Children’s Hospital to have some more testing of Finn’s hearing done to determine the level of his hearing loss.

The Munchkin had to be sedated for these tests because he wouldn’t sleep for long enough and I’m glad that we won’t have to do that to him again. The drug was given to him orally and, apparently, tastes really bad. I felt kind of mean holding him as he screamed while the nurse squirted it into his mouth.

The result of the tests is that Finn’s hearing loss is about 40 decibels, which means that he can’t hear sounds lower than that and falls into the range of Mild to Moderate hearing loss. This is not too bad. It does mean, though, that he will not always hear the softer parts of human speech and will have particular difficulty in noisy environments and when people are at a distance from him or not facing him. It also means that he probably need hearing aids at least until he learns to speak properly. And that we have more people to see.

Tomorrow we’ll go back to the hospital to see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. I gather she’ll have a talk to us about what Finn will need and answer any questions we have about future management of this.

On 4th March we will go to Hearing Australia and talk to them about hearing aids. I’m not sure whether Finn will actually be fitted for them at that stage, or if that’s a premilimary visit.

All in all, the result was pretty much what we expected and, while we would rather that The Munchkin’s hearing was completely normal, it’s a Very Good Thing that his hearing loss has been diagnosed and that we know it’s extent early so that he can have the best possible chance of it causing minimal difficulty in his life.