We are excited to announce that Tender Beginnings now supplies Newborn Hearing Screening in the comfort of the newborn’s home or in our home/office. We will be offering this service to any newborn babies in the central Tennessee area. We have available four staff members trained and ready to go. Every day, 33 babies (or 12,000 each year) are born in the United States with permanent hearing loss. With three of every 1,000 newborns having a hearing loss, it is the most frequently occurring birth defect.
There are two basic screening tests used to test infant hearing. Both are painless and the newborn can sleep right through them. No needles are required for testing. We will be using the OAE: The OAE screen (Otoacoustic Emission) measures an echo from the inner ear in response to a presented sound from a probe placed in the ear canal. This test confirms that the infant responds to sound at the cochlear level. The screens give good information about the infants hearing. More detailed information can be found on several web sites including www.infanthearing.org and www.babyhearing.org.