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Deaf woman hears son’s voice for the first time in viral YouTube video

Until last fall, 26-year-old Amy had never heard her five-year-old son's voice. She had never heard her parents' voices.

But thanks to a cochlear implant, the young mom, who was born with a sensorineural bilateral hearing loss, can finally hear the voices of her loved ones. And it doesn't take many words to get the point across.

"Hi, Mom," Amy's son, Blake, shouts to his teary mother in the video posted on YouTube.

Our niece has been deaf since she was born. She has never heard the sound of her parents voice or her six-year-old son, Blake. Every day for the next several months she will learn how sound works and where it comes from," Amy's aunt, Catherine Arnold, writes on YouTube.

Since the video was posted in September, it has gone viral.

"This is just a start to the road ahead to learn what sound is and where it comes from. It was the most amazing day ever to be a witness to this medical miracle and a true gift from God," Arnold writes.

Arnold regularly updates viewers with Amy's progress:

"Update: thank you to everyone that appreciates and feels what a beautiful time this was and continues to be for Amy and our families. She is continuing her hard work of speech and sound therapy to distinguish what sound is. Her pronunciation has improved vastly and she can hear words and especially music! Naturally, after a lifetime of lip reading and signing, it is still necessary for her to rely on that skill to have conversation in a group. Every day is new and sometimes an exhausting experience. She loves the challenge to improve yet more and she is a joy to be around. By the way, Amy has a high school diploma and college degree! This girl never let anything get in her way to be her best!"

According to a 2006 report by Statistics Canada, more than a million Canadians aged 15 and older report having some sort of hearing limitation. About 17 per cent of these cases were classified as severe.

So what exactly is a cochlear implant?

"A cochlear implant is an electronic device that is designed to provide hearing to those with profound deafness. Part of the device is surgically implanted into the inner ear and part is worn externally," explains The Canadian Academy of Audiology.

"As a prosthetic device, the cochlear implant stimulates the auditory or hearing nerve directly, bypassing the damaged part of the inner ear or cochlea. Many viable nerve fibres remain in the auditory nerve even in cases of profound deafness, and the cochlear implant can restore activity to this nerve and the hearing pathway."

The academy explains how Amy was able to understand speech during her first experience with the implant:

"Many individuals who have lost their hearing after acquiring speech and language (post-lingual deafness) are capable of excellent speech understanding with their implant. When children who are deaf are provided with cochlear implants they can perceive speech and environmental sounds previously unavailable to them," they explain.

"As they learn to attach meaning to the sounds they are hearing, they build the foundations for spoken language."

In 2011, we shed a few tears over Sloan Churman hearing her own voice for the first time at 29.

Last summer, a heartwarming video of two-year-old Cooper hearing his mom's voice for the first time went viral.

Inspired by Cooper's story, an Australian news station featured moving video clips of deaf children hearing for the very first time as their cochlear implants were switched on. Warning: Keep tissues nearby.

Read the criteria for Canadian candidates for the implant here.