Can you hear me?

So...don't remember if I happened to mention this, but Peach failed her hearing test in one ear while she was in the hospital, right after she was born. They had us come back a week later, and she failed again.

Fast forward a month, and we found ourselves in an audiologist's office for a battery of tests to determine what was going on.

After three hours of tests, it was determined that her right ear hears beautifully, just as it should. Her left ear, not so much. She has mild to severe hearing loss on a sliding scale, which means that she can hear low pitches in her left ear very well, but as pitch gets higher, the volume also needs to go up significantly in order for her to hear it.

To me, this was good news. We haven't known for a month if she was able to hear anything at all in her left ear. At least now we know that she can hear perfectly in one and a little bit in the other. For Juice, this was devastating news.

Juice is the type to beat herself up over everything, and nothing I can say to her will help. She really wanted to hear that there wasn't any problem, or at least find out why Peach has the hearing loss. We won't find that out until we go to an ear doctor.

To me, overall, the news is not as bad as it could have been, and we're still on a path that could lead a number of different directions. If the ear doctor says it's something that can be fixed, then we'll go that route. I'm not confident that it will be something that can be fixed, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. If it can't be fixed, she could wear a hearing aid to help her out. And it's entirely possible that she'll develop speech perfectly normally with her one good ear leading the way. Any way things develop, though, there is a plan, and we'll have support for professionals on this. We won't be alone.

Juice, though, was just a mess. And like I said, nothing I could say or do could console her. However, as soon as she talked to Chica, she straightened out. If you remember, it was about this time last year that Chica found out she had ovarian cancer and had a full hysterectomy. All it took was Chica saying, "At least you can have children," and Juice was fine.

I guess there are some things that husbands just can't fix.

What's important to me is that we do everything we can to help her develop normally, without making her feel like she's different. It's going to be a challenge, but things could be so much more worse. I'm just thankful for what we have in both of our beautiful daughters.