Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) for Baby Charlie

Jaleesa Al Kassem is organizing this fundraiser.

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This is our son, Charlie. He is a very happy and smiley baby! He was born with Grade 3 Unilateral Microtia, a congenital ear deformity. It causes, in his case, his right ear to be underdeveloped and small in size, leaving only some cartilage.

Microtia translates to small or tiny ear. The cause of microtia is still currently unknown but roughly 1 out of every 10,000 babies born in the USA is born with microtia.

With Charlie, there is no opening in his right ear. He is severely hard of hearing in that ear. It's almost sounds extremely muffled, like there are several hands covering that ear, just worse. Or imagine having your ear permanently clogged with water. This can delay his speech, give him a poor sense of direction (with sound), and give him a harder time communicating. Because there isn't an opening in his right ear, he can not have a traditional hearing aid that goes into the ear to help him hear better. The only hearing aid that will help him is a BAHA- Bone Anchored Hearing Aid. It's a device that is positioned behind his ear that conducts sound through the bone of his skull to his cochlear. It is held up with an elastic headband. The BAHA alone costs $6,000. It will help him to stay on track with learning how to talk, excel in school, and engage with kids his age. We plan to place him in day care after his first birthday (January 26) and hope to have the hearing aid by then. The extra money is to pay for the specialists visits.

After the age of 5, he can have surgery to permanently place the hearing aid without the headband . By age 7 or 8, depending on his eligibility, he can have surgery for an implant and also cosmetic surgery to create an ear to match.

But one step at a time, we just want our son to be able to hear properly and to prevent him from having any speech delay.

Every and any donation will help Charlie. If you would like to know more about Charlie's story, you can follow his journey on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/micro_charlie/