Video shows 3-year-old hearing her parents' voices for 1st time
It's a moment that continues to be shared online and is making eyes well -- a toddler in Florida reacting with surprise after hearing her parents' voices for the first time.
Q'ela Pierce's parents -- Nikitia Vasser, 33, and Quaneef Pierce, 25 -- had wondered whether she'd ever be able to hear after she failed a hearing test as a newborn. They fought for years to save her hearing but she had never heard their voices.
According to T&T Creative Media, which posted the video on YouTube, Q'ela, 3, got a cochlear implant on Aug. 29 at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando, Florida.
On Oct. 3, her parents were present as Q'ela's implant was activated.
In the video, Q'ela can be seen sitting in a chair and placing a toy on a desk in front of her. Suddenly, she touches her head as the implant is turned on and her parents say her name.
"Q'ela," they can be heard saying. "Q'ela."
The little girl, overcome with emotion, can be seen bursting into tears and then she hugs her mother. Her doctors said that the activation had not hurt her, just overwhelmed the toddler.
"Her first time hearing and it broke my heard. ... I couldn't record. ... But God is good," he said posting the video to Facebook. "It's only up for her from here. ... Her support system strong. ... P.S. It doesn't hurt her, she's just shocked."
In a later video he posted, Q'ela was more calm and playing with her mother. When she hears, she points to her ear and smiles.
"Yeah, you heard it?" her mother asks.
"Ok. This one ain't so emotional. ... #CochlearImplant !! I'm so happy for my baby. Y'all don't know what we been through trying just to get this reaction from her," Pierce wrote in a second post Oct. 3. "Daddy love you bae."
According to T&T Creative Media, Q'ela can recognize sounds from nature. Her mother told T&T Creative that she hoped sharing the videos helped other families in their efforts to end the silence for their children.
Vasser expressed similar sentiments in a Facebook post recently.
"This experience with Q'ela is so overjoying. We've been working on sounds that her speech therapist is working on her with and saying her name and pointing to her so she learns her name. ... I've been doing 'Mama.' She has the mouth movement. She'll be talking in no time," she said in a post on Facebook Oct. 6.
