People ask if she is British: Hearing testing

Hailey Ems was born weeks early, on the floor of an upstairs bathroom as emergency medical technicians tried to figure out how to get the stretcher upstairs.

She didn't meet the developmental milestones for the first year of life: crawling, standing, and speaking her first words. So doctors tested her for cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy, but ruled them out. Finally, when she was 14 months old, her ten-year-old brother was the first to realize the truth, saying "I don’t think Hailey can hear."

Hospitals routinely test newborns' hearing. But even that is not a guarantee that deaf and hearing-impaired babies will get the necessary early treatment. Parents of one-third of babies who fail the initial hearing screening do not bring their babies back for a more rigorous test. "If a child isn’t fitted with a hearing aid until age 2, that is when he or she will have to start learning what sounds are. If we catch kids in the first few months, we don't see delays and they do beautifully," says Anne Oyler, an audiologist with the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association.

Hailey, now six years old, received hearing aids soon after her brother's diagnosis. By her second birthday, she had cochlear implants in one ear. Within months, she had reached her developmental milestones. She'll have a cochlear implant in the other ear too.

Now she's entering a local elementary school. The only thing that sets her apart from her classmates is a small speaker for her desk and a microphone that her teachers will wear to amplify the sounds of her lessons. "When she talks, no one knows that she is deaf," says her mother. "She speaks so perfectly that some people ask if she is British."

Advice to parents of young children: Get their hearing tested so medical technology can help them reach their milestones on time.

Read Jamie Talan's source story in the Sept. 4 issue of the New York Times.