After having cochlear implant surgery, in an emotional video, a notable moment a deaf child heard her mom say “I love you” for the first time.
Since birth, A’deja Rivers has been deaf and has lived in a silent globe without hearing the voice of her mom, but all that changed June 20 when cochlear implants of the small tot were activated.
The marvelous moment was captured on tape, and the whole family of A’deja was there to celebrate the momentous occasion.

“All the love that I know she feels, for her to hear it, I know we all felt like, thank God, she’s able to hear us,” Patricia Shaw, A’deja Rivers’s mom said.
The 1-year-old sits on the lap of her mother in the heart-warming footage as she plays with some musical instruments before she hears the unique words of her mother.

“Hi, I love you baby, I love you so much,” Shaw says to her daughter, whose eyes seem to widen as she speaks.
“To know that she heard me say, ‘I love you,’ and she might have saw my mouth moving, but the first time she heard me say it, and her eyes lit up, it was a complete blessing.”
Since having her implants, A’deja has been “curious” and “adventurous,” her mother said.
For the first time, A’deja also started to enjoy music and dancing.

“Now it’s like whenever she hears a song, music has a tune, she just goes a bopping. It’s like an ‘Oh my goodness’ kind of moment,” Shaw said.
“We’re all very grateful and we thank god every day that she has this opportunity,” she added.
Shelly Ash, an audiologist and cochlear implant team coordinator at St. Petersburg, Florida’s Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, said cochlear implant technology has gone a long way since it was first launched in the 1980s.
“It works by radio frequency,” Ash clarified. “It is a micro computer.”
“This is my 30th year in the industry so I have been so lucky to get to do this hundreds of times with babies and young children and it’s always very exciting for everyone in the room because there is so much anticipation built up,” Ash added.