Parent Testimonials - Newborn Hearing Screening

Parents share their experiences with Hearing Screening in newborns.

The screening was performed without any result. "The device often lost contact, but I'm sure everything is fine...", we were told. The screening was checked off as passed. However, the child was hearing impaired since birth.

We parents noticed that our child did not hear well when she was already 8 months old. From then on, serial examinations followed.

"The device is probably defective," the doctor said. Even at the following check-up at the pediatrician's office, I did not get any proper information about the test result. However, I soon noticed that our son does not react when someone enters the room.

The mother herself is profoundly hearing impaired. In most of the hearing screenings, the measurement or the device did not work. There was never any certainty regarding the hearing impairment. Only further tests gave this certainty.

During the hearing screening only one ear was checked. On our intervention and the hint that we already have a child with unilateral hearing impairment, he was still tested on the second ear.

Since our son's hearing screening was not good on both sides, we had to go in for a checkup two months later. (The worst two months to wait). In the process, we were put off that this often happens, that bilateral tests "don't work". I sincerely wish that the staff in the hospitals would be better trained and not always just say that the hearing was certainly functioning normally.

The discharge papers said that our son had passed the hearing screening. It was only thanks to a dedicated nurse who confided in us before discharge that our baby would have to take the hearing test again before discharge.

Because one side was negative, the hearing screening was done on both sides. They did not consider the hearing impairment to be dramatic. We continued to monitor the hearing loss, at 2 months the hearing test was positive according to the doctor. It wasn't until 10 months that they started looking more closely because we put pressure on them.

No hearing screening was ever done and it was never an issue.