The Green Light Gang
By: Kenzie Kerr

My entire life I’ve wanted to be a mom. My husband, Teryn, and I got married in December 2020 and it wasn’t long after that we discovered I was pregnant. We were overjoyed and immediately I did all the right things; I took prenatal vitamins from the best researched sources, I ate healthy, exercised properly and had an extremely “boring” pregnancy. We were blessed to say the least. December 1, 2021 we welcomed our sweet boy, Remington, into the world! All went well in my labor and delivery and we were slated to go home the next day. Before leaving the hospital, the team conducted the newborn hearing screener. They had told us that he didn’t pass on both sides, but that’s pretty typical for many babies as they are born with lots of fluid and that we
should come back in a week to conduct the screener again.

We returned a week later and again, Remington didn’t pass the screener in both ears. At that point we started to worry, but were reassured by staff that still it’s “probably nothing” and that we should follow up with an audiologist to get a hearing test to find out why the test showed up as a non-pass. I called Children’s Hospital to get an appointment and we were set for about 3 weeks later. In the meantime at home, Remington responded to all kinds of sounds and would be calmed by our voices, so our worry began to fade. After all, we were told that it was probably nothing!

Fast forward to our appointment with audiology, Remington had an ABR test and it was confirmed that he had permanent hearing loss. Permanent. That word rang in my ears and I was devastated for my little boy. “This isn’t something that happens to me,” I thought. “This is the kind of thing that happens to other people, other families, not mine.” Our audiologist
reassured us that it was all going to be okay and that Remington had mild-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Meaning that what we were noticing at home wasn’t in our heads, and that he can hear sounds, just not softer/quieter sounds. We had decided that hearing aids were the next step for our little kiddo and he was fitted for his first pair shortly after he turned
two months old. Remington is now a thriving 3 year old and loves preschool and his “ears”. After meeting with a geneticist, we had opted to not conduct genetic testing as the test we would need would be rather expensive even with insurance, and it would really only really benefit us for future family planning. Life carried on, and we both kind of figured that his hearing loss was a
fluke as neither my husband nor I have any sort of hearing loss in our families as far back as we can date.

When Remington was about a year old, we found out we were pregnant again! And again, with a normal pregnancy and delivery, we welcomed our sweet girl Kennedy on August 21, 2023. We had hoped and prayed that our little girl would pass the hearing screening, but had planned on having a test done with our audiologist regardless just to be sure. Our experience felt like deja-vu as Kennedy did not pass in both ears and again, we were reassured it was “probably nothing”. But this time, we knew and we felt confident that our little girl was going to be okay, just like her brother. Kennedy had her ABR test with our audiologist when she was just two weeks old and funny enough, she had almost identical results as her older brother (seems like
it’s probably genetic and not a fluke at this point, huh).

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Kennedy was fitted for her first hearing aids a day after she turned one month old and is now a spunky 18 month old. She loves her “ears” as well and I have a feeling that she will love that she’s just like her big brother. The past 3+ years have brought on some challenges for sure, but our children are stronger, we are stronger, and our family is stronger because of it all. We are so
thankful to our community, friends, and family for all of the support we have received and I hope we can in turn support other families.

We giggle when the green lights on their hearing aids match up and we call our kids the “Green Light Gang” from the blinking green light on their ears. 🙂