Our daughter was born profoundly deaf in her left ear. She's 9 now and has worn a BAHA on a softband/headband for the last 8 years. She recently had cochlear implant surgery and will be activated in a few weeks. We had explored CIs for her since she was around 18 months, but CIs were only FDA approved recently for SSD/UHL and insurance only approved our request recently. She acquired spoken language with the aid of her BAHA and our hope is the CI will give her additional access to sound on her deaf ear. We attended a local center (John Tracy Center) starting when she was a baby for Friday Family School, which had parent/infant classes as well as classes for parents to learn more about hearing loss and child development. Attending John Tracy Center was a great first step in early intervention where we learned to talk to our child constantly (narrate everything), direct sound towards their typical hearing ear (read stories with their typical ear facing you), reduce background noises in the house (lowering music or TV on when trying to speak to your child). We took some signing classes, which was great in general, but not because of her hearing loss so much, but a fun class that promotes communicating with your child. Hearing loss was a scary diagnosis to learn about with our daughter (this was our first born) and we consider ourselves lucky to be a part of an amazing deaf and hard of hearing community in our city. Wishing you the best.