This December, my daughter, Kaitlyn, will celebrate her sweet sixteen birthday. As I look at this vibrant teenager with the beautiful blond hair and blue eyes, I find myself thinking back to her birth. More than a decade and a half ago, she was born at just 26 weeks gestation. Her birth weight was only 1 lb., 12 oz., and a few days later her weight was as low as 1 lb., 6 oz. The neonatologists were cautious and their prognosis guarded. Frankly, they didn't know if she would survive.

Just before delivery, while my wife was in preterm labor, we had a parade of physicians and residents who would visit her hospital room to check her status. The hospital was affiliated with a medical school, so we became accustomed to a regular flow of medical students who were treating my wife but were also a bit curious about the possibility of working with an infant delivered so early. The curious nature of their behavior centered on a small card that each doctor-in-training had in the pocket of his or her white coats.

Each time two of them came into the hospital room to check on my wife (they seemed to travel in pairs!), they would do a quick exam and then reach into their coat pockets to get the "card".  This seemingly magical card contained a set of statistics that detailed the survival rates of infants born at various birth weights and gestational ages. Each physician then would proceed to recite these statistics, which sounded something like:

"Mrs. Houston, you're approximately at 26 weeks gestation, and according to our research, infants delivered at this gestational age have a 20% chance of survival. If you deliver at 27 weeks gestation, the survival rate improves slightly to 26.8%. Of course, if you deliver later, the percentage of children who survive continues to go up."

Like clockwork, each physician and/or medical student would reach for their card after every visit to the room. The story was basically the same except for a few additional potential "complications" for a child born at each gestational age -- such as blindness, deafness, cerebral palsy, brain bleeds, and a variety of other medical conditions. After witnessing a few of these episodes, my wife and I could recite the statistics from heart!

At the time, hearing what could happen to our daughter was difficult to absorb. The information could have been delivered in a more patient-friendly -- and parent-friendly -- manner. The statistics that were shared were grim, but knowing what could happen helped us to prepare. Those two days in the hospital trying to prevent and then waiting for Kaitlyn's delivery allowed us to understand the worse possible scenario but, at the same time, hope and pray for the best outcome.

As I reflect on that experience, the statistics that the physicians cited were quite impressive. In fact, I'm a bit envious that we can't say something similar for children born with hearing loss. That is, I wish we had the ability to confidently state that: "...an infant identified at birth with a severe to profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and fitted with XYZ hearing aids and immediately enrolled in early intervention will have a 96% success rate in developing intelligible spoken language by the time s/he is five years old."

To accomplish something like this would require enormous resources and standard protocols for professionals across many disciplines, including but not limited to:  Pediatric Medicine, Audiology, Speech-Language Pathology, Deaf Education, Special Education, and Early Childhood Education.

The myriad of factors to control to obtain similar outcome data for children with hearing loss truly boggles the mind. Some of those factors would include:  cause of hearing loss, degree of hearing loss, type of hearing technology, communication approach, type and frequency of early intervention, socio-economic status, and any additional medical conditions in the child -- just to capture the most basic information.  

Parents today who have a child with hearing loss deal with too many challenges to ensure their child is successful. They often face obstacles securing appropriate audiological services and early intervention that supports their preferred mode of communication. Furthermore, the variability in services from community to community is alarming, and if the family lives in a rural area, there's an even greater chance the child will be grossly underserved or not receive services at all.

Kaitlyn, my 1 lb., 12 oz. baby girl, is now a sophomore in high school and doing very well. Aside from spinal surgery for scoliosis about four years ago, she is a rather typical teenage girl who worries about her grades, learning to drive, and getting asked to the upcoming dance. We owe her success to treatment and intervention that was well-defined, consistent, and delivered by practitioners who were highly-trained. Someday, I hope all parents who find themselves dealing with a premature infant or some other medical condition at birth -- such as hearing loss -- can receive the same level of support from the professionals surrounding them.