Beautiful Noise

Jackson losing his voice has been a tough pill to swallow in all of this. It was one of those things we didn't even think about until after he had gotten the tracheotomy. When Jackson first got really sick and was intubated the silence in his room was noticeable. And we didn't like it. Hunter kept a steady loop of soft music playing for 2 weeks because we couldn't take the silence. We would torture ourselves watching videos of Jackson running around, yelling over and over just sobbing. Praying for the day when we would see him like that again. 

Because Jackson has so much scarring in his airway now he is not able to push enough air up around the tracheostomy and talk. Removing the feeding tube in his nose reduced a little pressure his esophagus was putting on his trachea allowing him to make some small noises again. But not enough for a speaking valve. 

But the thing is Jackson doesn't need his to voice to make noise. Lots of noise. Beautiful noise. We worried so much about how he would communicate with us. How would we know what he wanted. Or if he needed us since we couldn't hear him cry. But Jackson has picked up sign language so much faster than I imagined. And now he communicates better than he did before (which was mostly just a combination of pointing and yelling with a few bye byes thrown in for good measure). 

I put together a video of the signs Jackson has learned so far. The first clip is the last video I took of him talking on December 27th. Watching it doesn't make me cry anymore. It makes me proud to see how far he's come in his communication. Especially now that I know he will have no problem continuing to make noise. Lots of noise. Beautiful noise.