My daughter made that umma, mumma sound, or something like a mamamamamamama sound, but aside from that, her vocalizations were mostly very high-pitched squeals -- we thought she was part dolphin
.
If you can get your hands on Signing Time videos, they are a fun way to introduce vocabulary, very playful, featuring little kids signing. It's ASL, though, so you may want to find BSL if most of your family is in the UK or something with the most common SL in Cyprus. We started in an immersion situation at about 14 months, and she was using sign extensively by the time she hit 2 years, no language frustration. I know a little guy from a Deaf family who refused to sign until his family took away his HAs and TV, a year later, he now signs like a pro, and loves it and the HAs are back in play. Sometimes you have to find ways to motivate them to move along the learning curve, provide some immersion
.
Sounds like you are moving quickly on the medical front, which is really good. I'm convinced, based on many other little kids I've met, that there's a huge difference in how easy it is to acquire spoken language if implanted prior to 2-3 than later. I went in with really low expectations, and I think that works well: I figured that if she could hear any pleasant environmental sounds, we'd consider it a raving success, and anything else was a gift. But we were lucky: she reacted positively to voices the day she was activated: first surprised, then whirling around with delight at the sound of her dad calling her name, at my voice, and laughing at her own voice! Within a few weeks she was understanding and speaking her first ever words, and from that point she has never stopped talking
. Her hearing level went from ~95-105 db to ~15 in a booth, and after getting the 2nd CI, although her hearing seemed the same in a booth, we found an enormous difference in the real world.
She prefers to wear her processors all her waking hours now, although back when she had only one she would tire of it in the late afternoon, and go without sometimes on weekends. We let her wear them kayaking, in the pool or bath if she insists (and she often does) -- because they are water resistant to 30 feet down for a half our of immersion (and what 6 YO stays underwater that far and that long
). But I don't let her wear them at the beach if she goes into the waves. I pop them off after story time at night or wait until she falls asleep, which is often her preference as she likes to chatter with me about her day or sing as she falls asleep in the dark.
We were worried initially, bc she had been language-deprived her entire first year -- she is adopted and was in an institutional environment where they didn't know she was deaf. But by the time she hit 5 years old she was at an age appropriate level both in sign and spoken language, and she's since surpassed the average for hearing kids her age in verbal testing, so we're confident that although taking a bilingual approach slowed her language development initially, it hasn't resulted in any long term delays and we think she has benefitted greatly from having both modalities available. We speak a bit more than sign at home because she's in an ASL immersion environment all day, but she shifts back and forth, and we follow suit.
We've never done traditional speech therapies or AVT, so she doesn't have the perfect diction we commonly see from early-implanted kids nowadays, but still, she doesn't sound too different from a lot of 6 year olds. It may partly be that she's at a school for the deaf all day where she has very few spoken language models and ASL is the primary method of instruction/ interaction, it may be that it's just typical of her age. She's very active in the Deaf community. And she participates in extracurricular activities in big groups of hearing kids and adults as comfortably as she engages with Deaf peers and adults.
One thing I found terribly helpful when making decisions was to meet many kids with CIs and families, and see the range of outcomes. It can really vary depending upon age at implantation and all sorts of things. I know children you'd never guess were deaf who wear cis. I've chatted with a child who got an implant as toddler (and his mom) and never put it on again after activation. I know a child who likes her CIs on for environmental sounds, but prefers to sign instead of speaking. I think the possibilities are amazing, but always keep in mind that each child is different. I'm also keenly aware that this technology is a very tenuous link to sound: a dead battery, broken cord, or fallen magnet away from no sound at all. An infection away from no sound. It's very important to remember that your child remains deaf, he doesn't change. He just may have a tool to use to access sound to varying degrees in specific circumstances sometimes.
I've found it all to be such an amazing adventure, mostly wonderful things, occasionally not so wonderful (surgery -- ugh! -- can't get past that as a serious downside). Wishing you many good things in your journey!