Finn is Ellie's son and is the one who inspired her to write "Image Bearer."

 

Finn was born with Down syndrome and conductive hearing loss. He wears a special hearing aid called a BAHA. BAHA is a bone anchored hearing aid. 

After Finn was born, he passed his newborn hearing screening without any problem. I felt certain that his hearing was fine so I was surprised when our local Down syndrome clinic advised us to get an ABR hearing test at 3 months. ABR stands for Auditory Brainstem Response. During this test, a baby sleeps and their brain waves are measured to determine if they have hearing loss. This test determined that Finn has mild loss in both ears. At 9 months, Finn had a behavioral hearing test where an audiologist tested to see which sounds he responded to. At this point it was determined that since Finn had not outgrown his mild hearing loss that he would benefit from a BAHA. Since getting his BAHA, Finn has had behavioral hearing tests monthly to monitor his hearing and to train him to respond to sounds during the test so that his hearing loss can be identified with greater accuracy.

As Finn grows, his ear canals should get bigger and eventually his hearing loss should go away. For this reason, Finn wears the BAHA on a headband rather than getting it implanted into his skull like some do. Using this BAHA will help his speech development as he cannot hear all soft sounds without it. Overall, Finn tolerates the BAHA well but he does take it off frequently to play with it.