Then one day, a real breakthrough came when I was sitting on the couch and she was standing a few metres away playing.
Let’s see how this goes, I thought to myself, and then started singing, ‘Rain, rain, go away . . .’
Sophie didn’t turn, but I heard a little voice sing, ‘Ome ain o’er ay.’
I could hardly believe my ears. An utter miracle! It was the miracle I’d been praying for!
My heart swelled and I felt such happiness. Now, for certain, I knew she could hear sound! But I didn’t grab her or cry or jump up and down, I just kept singing. I wanted to hear more and more of her sweet voice. I had to learn patience.
By the end of the following month, Sophie had returned to half-days at HSDC. It was the best place for her right now because I was free to spend time there with her whenever I wanted. Speech therapy was included, and her teachers, speech therapist and I could monitor her progress with the implant. We were all learning about it together.
I constantly sought different ways to teach Sophie language. This was the first year of her implant, so she was auditorily the same as a one-year-old child. I had learned that a hearing person has tens of thousands of tiny hairs within the cochlear that vibrate and transmit sound to the brain, while Sophie’s implant only had twenty-two electrodes to work with. The progress was still slow, but all new discoveries and breakthroughs were triumphs, no matter how small. I tried not to think about the future, just focused on one day at a time.
Within six months, as if a switch had been flipped, Sophie started babbling like crazy – because she was actually hearing things. It occurred to me that she was mimicking conversation just like a toddler would. She was even using rising and falling intonations. I loved it! This kept me going with extra vigour. It was down to me and Sophie’s therapists to turn the sound she was now receiving into language. She had to be taught to understand what she was hearing. We still had a big mountain to climb, but what a huge milestone for Sophie!
‘Ooe eee ba?’ she said one day, with her sweet voice lifting at the end like she was asking me a question. I was so delighted to hear this and followed her around the room. She walked over and put the dolly in its bath.
‘Oh, dolly needs a bath?’ I repeated, very excited. This was a major moment. ‘Clever girl, Sophie! Let’s bath dolly!’ I talked loudly and clearly. For the first time I held a small but firm hope that she could grasp language. It felt like a miracle, a true miracle! I could see light at the end of the tunnel.
It helped that Tom was still such an easy baby. If we wanted him to go to sleep, all we had to do was to give him a ‘silkie’ – a piece of silk cut from my old nightdress, and just like that, he was fast asleep. The silkie was his comfort, and my saviour.
Surprisingly, Tom had also gained a lot from observing and listening to our unusual family dynamic and routine. I could see he was developing in leaps and bounds. No sooner did he say ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’ than he came out with ‘Mummy, I want my milk. Now!’ At only sixteen months old. It’s funny, because I never remember him cooing or babbling. I was always too busy with Sophie to listen out for it. Now he had a huge vocabulary and very advanced language skills for his age.
‘Tom’s really flying,’ I said to Li one Sunday when we were at the park together while Tom was attempting to climb up the slide. ‘At this rate he’ll be overtaking Sophie before we know it.’
‘He’s a clever boy, Mary,’ Li said, seeing Tom gently interact with Sophie. ‘He will be such a lovely brother for Sophie as they grow up.’
We were touched to see Tom being so tender with his big sister. It was as if he knew there was something different about her. I took great comfort from that. ‘I think so, too, Li. And his language. It’s incredible. We have our own extra speech therapist in him,’ I joked.
‘It’s because he hears your endless speech lessons with Sophie,’ Li laughed.
At around the six-month mark since Sophie’s operation, I realised her voice was starting to sound better, showing more clarity, but it was all still such a struggle. Occasionally, I would let her watch TV in the afternoons. It was a necessary break for both of us. Poor Sophie. She did look tired and fed up with me a lot of the time. Her tantrums continued to be silent performances. She would rock in the corner or simply glare at me and refuse to do anything. I was guessing this was her way of showing her frustration.
Over time, I learned not to sweat the small stuff. If Sophie wanted to go out wearing the bright yellow frilly dress from China with her red Texan cowboy boots, I didn’t care. As long as she wore the harness and implant, she was allowed to wear or do whatever she wanted. Miraculously, she never once complained or tried to remove the harness, even though she looked different to other children. I also noticed that she adored the freedom she had when the implant was off and she could perhaps escape from my constant nagging voice singing all the time. She played beautifully with the Mad Mothers’ children. She would watch the others closely and go along with the game quite happily. But I made sure we didn’t have long play dates, as we still had to work on her therapy without background noise.
With Sophie’s newfound progress, Li and I felt that she needed to move to a mainstream school. We chose Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, which was considered one of the best private schools in Houston. Duchesne was relatively small and it was also an all-girls’ school. I felt that having boys in class would be too noisy.
Social and emotional development were part of the school’s ethos. Most importantly, the principal was happy for Sophie to do just a half-day of school each day. I could then take her home at lunchtime for a nap as she was so exhausted from processing new sounds. Then we would do our own therapy lessons in the afternoons following videos of Linda Daniels.
Duchesne turned out to be wonderful for Sophie. She picked up on some social behaviour – maybe not language, but this skill was important to learn too. Soon she was five and was settled into a new routine. The teachers were kind and the children accepted her – bulky equipment and all. Luckily her hair had grown over and you could hardly see the implant.
Sophie’s teacher asked me to perform a dance for the preschoolers for one of their weekly Show and Tell sessions. What a good idea. I sweetly convinced Li to join me. We decided to perform the famous pas de deux from Le Corsaire, the classical ballet based on Lord Byron’s epic romantic poem. This is one of the most performed in the world and requires virtuosic dancers – well, Li was certainly that! I knew the children would adore the costumes, Li as the swashbuckling pirate and me a beautiful maiden in tutu and full pointe shoes. Almost like a prince and princess in a Disney tale, perfect for five-year-old girls. I really wanted to make it memorable for the other children as well as Sophie.
On the day, we were all up early. We left Tom with Pat and set off with our dance paraphernalia – costumes, make-up and the tape recorder. Sophie saw the costumes and knew something was going to happen. She was excited. I still had to keep my language simple, but she could now just about understand some whole sentences. ‘Sophie, we are going to school now,’ I said to her. ‘Daddy and Mummy are going to dance!’ I did a little twirl and curtsey to act out what I was saying. She smiled happily. That cute smile!