It’s always special to witness baby’s firsts: the first smile, the first roll, the first time she sits up or stands. But for Anna Esler, the moment her one-year-old daughter Ayla heard sound for the first time was overwhelmingly emotional—and it was all caught on camera.
In the now-viral video, Ayla, sitting on her mom’s lap in the doctor’s office during a test of her new cochlear implants, began giggling as she experienced her very first sounds, and her mother couldn’t hold back the tears.
The first year of Ayla’s life had not been what the couple expected. After failing her newborn screening twice, Ayla was diagnosed with hearing loss. Right away, the family began working with doctors at the Cook Children’s Health Care System, a nationally recognized nonprofit pediatric hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, to learn more about what life is like for kids with hearing loss and what resources were available to them.
"Being deaf isn’t bad. It’s just different,” Esler and her husband Will said in an interview with the hospital news blog. after the video became an internet sensation. “We had spent a lot of time preparing ourselves for what life would be like without Ayla hearing. We had to let go of some things, like her knowing the sound of our voices, the sound of music, the sound of laughter. We had to prepare ourselves to see her enjoy those things in a different way, through the vibration of them, to ‘hear’ with her eyes.”
But then everything changed.
“When we found out that cochlear implants were an option for her, sound became a reality for her again, and we are so grateful for that,” they said.
Still, no one was sure what to expect, even after Ayla had the surgery.
“Every child responds differently when their cochlear implants are activated, and so we didn’t know what kind of reaction she would have,” Esler said. “And even though I knew it would work, there was still some doubt in my mind. So when I saw her responding to sound I was overwhelmed by thankfulness to God and to everyone else who has been a part of this journey.”
The couple’s two older children were also there to witness the occasion.
Recently, the family has started working with a speech therapist to help Ayla further develop her language skills now that she can hear. “She still has challenges ahead of her,” the couple said. “We have a year’s worth of catch up to play. And whereas most kids learn to hear naturally, we will actually have to teach her to hear, to teach her that sound has meaning.
“But she’s already responding positively,” they continued. “Sometimes she turns to sounds (which she had never done before), she dances to music, she’s starting to calm down when we sing to her if she’s upset. We really couldn’t be more thankful for the new opportunities our little girl has thanks to everyone in her life.”
We love a happy ending!
Navigate forward to interact with the calendar and select a date. Press the question mark key to get the keyboard shortcuts for changing dates.
