What?

So, lately Abigail has been saying "What?" after we tell her to do anything, even if we repeat it 3 or 4 times.  Honestly, it has been so frustrating. And she did that about a year ago, because she thought that would be funny.  So, when she started doing it again we started giving her time outs.  Tonight Matt suspected that she couldn't hear out of her left ear.  He had me whisper to her from across the room. I did it with the room quiet and it took a while for her to turn toward me. We turned her so that her left ear was toward me and she didn't respond at all. Then Matt whispered in her left ear, "I love you." She repeated what she heard... garbled nonsense words.  Matt whispered, "I love you," in her right ear.  Abigail immediately responded, "I love you too, Dad." We tried a couple other tests, which continued to confirm that she wasn't hearing out of her left ear.  We realized that she has been saying "what?" since she got her ear infection and started taking medicine for it.  We also realized that she has been sitting closer to the t.v. this week when we let her watch tv and that today in church even after we told her to whisper she was speaking at the same volume she normally uses to speak. When we asked her about it she said, "No, I'm sorry." We felt so bad that she thought she was in trouble. After we explained to her that she was not in trouble she immediately said, "Yeah, I'm have trouble hearing." We have been signing more lately anyway, but tonight we made the pledge to sign all the time and make sure to talk to her right ear.  We haven't heard any more "What?" since we started that.

We both feel REALLY bad that we've been punishing Abigail when she legitimately hasn't been able to hear us.  Matt feels worse than me.  He blames himself for not knowing or scheduling a follow-up appointment after she finished her antibiotics. Even still I cried for a second after she went to bed thinking about the challenges she COULD encounter.  Almost immediately I started feeling guilty, because of all people I feel the most equipped to deal with something like this. And it's not the end of the world. I'm also trying not to freak out, because we definitely don't know anything yet.  It may be something as simple as needing tubes or it may be permanent. We really won't know until we take her to the doctor.  For now we will just adjust to accommodate her needs. Then once we figure out what is going on we will take everything one day at a time. Definitely not the end of the world either way.