In any case, she and the other three writers all associate the idea of investing in the welfare of the deaf child, specifically his or her recovery from deafness and rehabilitation, with rejecting the option of having a second, "normal" child.
The Diagnosis
Some parents first suspected that their child did not react normally to sound when he or she was only a few months old. Other parents became concerned that something was wrong when it became evident their child was slow to speak. Many parents suppressed their suspicions for some time by finding explanations for the child's unusual behavior or assuming that he or she would grow out of it:
When she was four months old, we discovered she was rather slow to react to sound compared with other children the same age. At first we thought it was just slow development.Last February I gave birth to a daughter.…Not long after, I found her hearing wasn't very acute. I thought maybe she was too young to concentrate her attention. I didn't consider she might have a hearing problem. Why should she? There was no possible reason.
One mother described her fear that her suspicions might be confirmed, which led to several months' delay before she took her son for testing: