DEAF CAN LEAD DEAF TO EARLY SPEECH.

Byline: DENNIS MCCARTHY 

``I know what these parents are going through. I always tell them: Your child will be fine. This is the way of the world. Not everybody is perfect.'' - Jayne DeLeon

GLENDALE - It says a lot about technology and the world we live in today that a profoundly hearing-impaired woman like Jayne DeLeon can make her living testing newborn babies for potential deafness and lesser hearing loss.

It says a lot that is good.

The technology that provide this woman a paycheck to support her two teen-age daughters today didn't yet exist 11 years ago, when DeLeon brought her 2-year-old daughter, Tiffany, to Glendale Adventist Medical Center to be tested for hearing loss.

Children like Tiffany and Jayne herself as a child - her profound hearing loss was not diagnosed until she was 4 - never had the chance to be tested as newborns still in the hospital maternity ward.

Mothers would take their babies home and not know - sometime for years - that something was wrong, that their children were having trouble hearing a word anyone said.

``This is crucial because, if a baby doesn't hear speech and language, it can't develop it, and the child winds up playing catch-up the rest of a lifetime,'' said Antoinette Miller, senior audiologist and director of the Newborn Hearing Screening Program at the medical center.

Time is of the essence, Jayne adds. ``So many children go undiagnosed and struggle in school, but now we're able to diagnose them as babies, and if there is a problem, we can help them immediately.''

< Jayne, who reads lips to communicate, works out of a little office in the maternity ward, arriving in the morning to check the list of newborns whose hearing she will test before they go home with their mothers.

``I feel so blessed to be doing this because I can see how so many children are being helped,'' she said. ``Luckily, my own daughter, Tiffany, is doing great in school now. But I wish she could have been diagnosed as a baby. Maybe we could have done more for her.''

Jayne wheels her portable testing machine down the hallway into rooms where babies now stay with their mothers after birth instead of together in the maternity ward.

``Most of the mothers never realize Jayne is deaf because she has worked so hard to make her speech intelligible and is so good at lip-reading,'' said her boss, Antoinette Miller.

It was Miller who had the foresight to hire Jayne last year after the state Department of Health Services certified the center's hearing-screening program for newborns. ``We first met back when Jayne brought her daughter in for testing when she was 2, and we developed a close relationship over the years when she brought Tiffany in for speech therapy,'' Miller said.

``When the job opened up for a screener, I thought who better than Jayne? I knew she would be great relating to mothers whose babies have a hearing problem, and she has been. She's added so much to our program.''

While the baby is asleep, soft sounds are played for about five minutes through earphones especially made for babies, and the newborn's response to the sounds is automatically displayed on a computer screen.

If the baby's hearing is OK, the word ``pass'' appears on the screen. If it is not, the word ``refer'' appears.

In the last year, six babies out of hundreds delivered at the hospital have had to be referred back for more diagnostic testing and were found to have hearing nerve damage, Miller said.

They were all fitted with hearing aids and enrolled in early speech and language intervention programs that will help them develop their own speech and language patterns early.

If the parents need counseling - and many do - Jayne is brought in to talk with them and help them calm down.

``Oh, my God, what do I do? My perfect-looking baby has a disability,'' Miller said mothers of the hearing impaired often think at first. ``Jayne talks to them and reassures them.''

She tells them that the child will be fine because the hearing loss was caught early, and help can be provided for the baby right now to hear speech and develop speech.

It's not as it was years ago, when valuable time was wasted because a hearing impairment was not diagnosed until later in life when it was much tougher to learn to speak.

Before better technology arrived, before a deaf woman with a deaf child got a job at a hospital testing the hearing of newborn babies.

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Photo:

Jayne DeLeon checks a newborn's hearing at Glendale Adventist Hospital, where she talks with parents of hearing-impaired babies.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer