Well first, to the OP, congrats on getting the birth you wanted! Twice!

And second, as someone who works with Deaf and hard of hearing children, I have to comment on this. Before the advent of Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, it was actually extremely common for children with hearing loss to be missed until they were several years old. This is not because their mothers were incompetent or unobservant, but because children are very good at responding to visual stimuli even if they are lacking in auditory stimuli. In other words, they can “fake it” quite well, even if completely deaf. So no, a child turning his head across the room when a person speaks is not a hearing test, because they could be cuing off a million different other little things instead of the speaker’s actual voice. Or perhaps they can hear the actual voice, but not well enough to distinguish words, which limits their language access. I know it feels like you can tell, but so did, and do, the mothers of many children with even profound hearing loss. It is hard to notice when they are young, even for the best mother!

However, when they are young is when they desperately need language input to help them develop full and appropriate language they can use throughout their lives! Now of course children who are discovered to have hearing loss later can still be successful, but their odds of being successful go up the earlier intervention is started. That intervention could be as simple as being sure the child’s attention is always gotten before you start speaking to them, or it could involve hearing aids or a cochlear implant, or it could involve learning to sign or cue, or some combination of the above. But without intervention, even children who only have moderate loss at some of the “frequencies known to man and dog” can have serious language delays.

And no, the baby does not have to raise his left hand if he hears a sound. UNHS usually uses ABR testing or other such testing. Probes are placed in the baby’s ear canal while he/she is asleep and his/her brainwaves are read as sounds are sent into their ear. It doesn’t tell you what they hear (i.e. it might miss a processing disorder) but it does tell you what the system is capable of receiving. It is completely non-invasive and takes about 5 minutes.

Of course, any parent who wants to opt out has that right. But UNHS has made a HUGE difference in the lives of children with hearing loss by giving them access to language much, much earlier on average. Why would you potentially deny your child full access to language, such a foundational part of our human experience, just because you don’t like a lot of the other invasive tests the medical community demands? Again, I’m not saying you can’t opt out, I’m just saying please do your research before you do, and from this statement it’s clear you haven’t.

It is absolutely amazing how many parents DON’T notice a hearing loss in children before school age because there are many degrees and configurations of hearing loss. A mild or reverse slope hearing loss for instance will not be evident to a parent or even a GP. But it will drastically interfere with language acquisition and articulation.

There are two types of new born hearing screening. One is Otoacoustic Emissions, and it only requires about 15 minutes. The other is Auditory Brain-stem Response testing. It is really best to have both done.

And you absolutely DO NOT have to have this done at a hospital. Any area audiologist with the appropriate equipment can do it, and generally do it alot better than the techs or nurses in a hospital (if they don’t have an audiologist, and many don’t). And state laws require them to report this information in most states. And most of the times it is much easier to get into a regular audiologists office than to the hospital for this, and as far as I know, within my profession, there just isn’t the same bias against home birth. Obviously there will be variety in individuals, but we have no official position and no widely agreed upon unofficial position.

So please, do remember that you likely have other options. And also, the sooner you get it done, the easier it is to do, because these tests require the baby to be sleeping or at least still and quiet, and that is much easier to have happen if it is a really newborn rather than over 6 months.

This is ridiculous. They were being pains in the butts on purpose. My youngest brother in law had the same kind of test that newborns get when he was well over a year (retesting to nail down loss), and they just brought him in during nap time and he slept through it. As long as they’ll sleep reliably nothing more is needed. And in some places now they don’t even have to sleep! There is NO NEED for an infant to be “cranky and hungry” to get tested. I am angry at that center on your behalf for denying access to an extremely simple and important test to people.