It wasn't until later that we realised that, well, not hearing, not being able to speak, having difficulties learning to speak...
...well then there's sign language, but the whole world can hear... that is actually a bit complicated.
And how about schools, so... Slowly but surely we started thinking it was pretty troublesome.
We got into contact with deaf people, deaf children as soon as possible.
Yeah, and Emiel, once we started signing, he flourished, he absorbed everything like a spunge.
That was great to see, that was developing just fine.
And then one night we received a call from my father in law, who had seen something on television, about something they could do to allow you to learn to hear.
We had no idea, and at the time it wasn't nearly as well known as it is now. So the doctors, the audiologist, they hadn't told us that.
We consider ourselves lucky, because we just calmly got used to the idea, and we were actually even a little upset that we now had to think about...
...something that made us think, why? You know, it's going alright, he's just going to the school for the deaf.
Anyway, to make another long story short, we thought really hard about our options.
And we got into contact with several children of different ages with a CI, and we also visited some older children, there were hardly any younger ones.
Well, we eventually decided that Emiel should get a CI.
We thought that choice, for him.. well, that that was a good decision. Besides, we never did regret that decision.
And my daughter Sofie, that was seven years later, so that was a completely different story, actually.
Well, we were familiar with deafness. Everyone who knew Emiel, everyone always assumed it was kind of an accident that he was deaf. So everyone assumed that our second child would be able to hear.
And well, then the... what do you call it, the early screening had been just, after eight days. –You mean the BERA-test?
No, after eight days someone comes to your house, just like with the Guthrie test after a few days, and they do a small test. And if that garners any results you get a referral.
Well, something was obviously immediately not right with Sofie. So she got the BERA-test as well. Yep, she is also completely deaf, yeah.
But that was different, because we really already knew all there was to know about deafness, we had already started on sign language with her, because we always kept doing that with Emiel as well, even though he hears a lot with his CI.
Yes, she has completely, has been completely raised with language. And later, when she was six months old, we started considering a CI.