When babies are born here, they give them a routine hearing screening a few hours after birth. They wheel a little cart to your bed and perform a test. Zev’s left ear passed, but the right ear was inconclusive, and therefore did not pass. This meant that he would need to be rescreened with more sensitive equipment later, and he had this appointment yesterday. Interestingly, a few hours after the initial test, several drops of brown liquid came out of his right ear, and I have to think that it was blocking the equipment from effectively measuring his hearing, but the rule is you have to have a formal rescreen if they don’t pass the first one.
So we went to the hospital yesterday for the rescreen, and he had to wear electrodes on his head and have a small tube set in his ear for the test (all totally non-invasive and painless). The electrodes measure brain and muscle activity. The baby has to be asleep for the test, so they have you sit in a comfy chair and breastfeed after they get them hooked up and wait for the baby to fall asleep.
So there I sit, feeding my little guy, and the nurse asks me if I have a mobile phone because she is getting what seems to be excessive muscle activity and it must be caused by an electrical device in the room. I powered down my phone and she started measuring again. But the activity was just as strong. She kind of did a double take as she realized that he really was sucking that hard! Apparently, Zev has the strongest suck she has ever seen in a newborn!
Of course when I reported this to Michael, he was quite proud of his son’s enormous strength! My nipples are not quite as proud.
Oh, and his hearing is perfect in both ears.