Watch: Toddler Hears Mother Say 'I Love You' for First Time
There are some amazing inventions out there that have tremendously impacted people’s lives. One of those inventions is the cochlear implant.
The idea of using electricity to improve hearing can be traced back to 1790, according to Very Well Health. But the official creation of this modern invention is attributed to Dr. William House who first tested his idea in 1961.
It wasn’t until 1984, however, that the cochlear implant became FDA approved.
Since then, many leaps and bounds have been made in advancing this technology. WFTS-TV reported cochlear implants even have Bluetooth capability nowadays.
But what is a cochlear implant and how does it work? For those of us who don’t suffer from hearing loss, it can be difficult to understand exactly what these devices do.
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, “A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.”
The device relies on a microphone, transmitters and a speech processor. Sound travels through the microphone to the speech processor and the transmitters convert that sound into electric pulses.
A cochlear implant can be life-changing for everyone in a family. And seeing a child hear the sound of a loved one’s voice for the first time?
“This moment never gets old,” audiologist Shelly Ash told WFTS. “It’s always so moving.”
Over the years, we’ve witnessed a number of moving moments like what Ash describes.
One of these more recent moments took place for a Florida family and their little girl A’Deja Rivers. The almost 2-year-old was born deaf and her dad and older sister Jalen also suffer from hearing impairment.
A’Deja’s family wanted to see if cochlear implants would work for her, just like it does for her big sister. Her parents couldn’t be more thrilled.
“It’s so exciting,” Patricia Rivers, A’Deja’s mom, told WFTS. Her dad agreed that seeing his daughter hear for the first time was “great.”
But nothing is as great as seeing this sweet family come together and voice their love for A’Deja. When her mom says “I love you” for the first time, the moment is everything.
“When we first start out, we’re introducing very soft levels of electrical current,” Shelly Ash told WFTS. “It just sounds to her like ‘beep, beep, beep.’”
The sounds she heard made the little girl’s face light up. A memorable experience that will surely last this family a lifetime.
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