Up until she was 14-months-old, little Reyn Schadt had never heard her mother’s voice.

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She was born with a virus called Cytomegalovirus, which left her hearing impaired.

Thanks to a Cochlear Implant, a small hearing device fitted behind her ear, she was able to experience sound for the first time.

On the day her implant was to be turned on, her parents waited nervously. When a nurse turned on the Cochlear Implant's switch, the first sounds Reyn heard made her cry. Her mother smiled through the toddler’s tears – they meant the device was working.

Two months later, 16-month-old Reyn and her mother sing nursery rhymes together, Reyn has started to perfect speech and, says her mother, “we’ve really seen her personality blossom!”

Speaking to newscasters at WDRB News, a station in the US, her mother Courtney Schadt said: “It's been quite a journey.

“Finding out that she had hearing loss was shocking. I really didn't know much about people with hearing loss. I assumed that she would have to use sign language and that she might not be able to go to mainstream school.

“I feel like we've just made this huge journey where at the beginning I felt hopeless about it. It was a big mourning period for us as a family because we really didn't know what her future held.

“Now her whole life is ahead of her without any limitation.”

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