Deaf People Hearing Sound for the FIRST Time… Very precious moment!!!

What is it like when a deaf person hears for the first time? These videos are flashes of fleeting moments from someone’s life that people find inspiring with little understanding of what’s really going on. As with most things in life, anything is more complicated than a few minutes of sentimentality. As someone who has gone through the “hearing for the first time” process twice with bilateral cochlear implants, I can assure you that my experience cannot be reduced to a two minute sweet video.

Here’s the real deal. When I say I was born profoundly deaf, I mean that my deafness was so profound that my audiologist couldn’t measure it as the instruments only went up to 120 dB. Amplifying devices such as hearing aids and FM systems didn’t help at all – I considered them more decorative than useful. The threshold for profound deafness is 75 dB, so I was particularly profoundly deaf, which is not very common in children. Since my deafness was discovered at 4 months, I started learning American Sign Language at 6 months. This means that by the time I received my first cochlear implant, my language and cognitive development was on par with my hearing peers.