A one-year-old girl just heard her mom say “I love you” for the first time.
A’deja Rivers has been deaf since birth and so has lived in a silent world without hearing her mom’s voice but all that changed June 20 when the tiny tot’s cochlear implants were activated.
The wonderful moment was caught on tape and A’deja’s whole family was there to celebrate the big moment.
In the heartwarming footage, the 1-year-old sits on her mom Patricia Shaw’s lap as she plays with some musical toys, before she hears her mom’s special words.
“Hi, I love you baby, I love you so much,” Shaw tells her daughter, whose eyes seem to widen while her mother speaks.
A’deja’s grandmother is featured in the clip as well, saying, “Granny loves you. First time you can hear Granny say, ‘I love you,'” as she plants a big kiss on her granddaughter’s face.
“A’deja had a great reaction,” audiologist Shelly Ash, who is also the cochlear implant team coordinator at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, told Good Morning America Wednesday.
“She took it all in. It was a really neat moment when we could see her awareness on her face, her eyes lighting up,” Ash told the outlet.
Shaw expressed gratefulness for A’deja’s implants, calling the experience a “complete blessing.”
“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,” the Arcadia, Florida, resident told GMA.
“It was always like, ‘OK, the day is coming up and how is it going to feel?’ And it felt amazing,” she added. “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.”
A’deja has been “curious” and “adventurous” since getting her implants, her mom told the outlet.
“She wants to be a part of everything,” Shaw said — adding that little A’deja has discovered a love for 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,” she added. “We’re all very grateful and we thank god every day that she has this opportunity.”
- This article originally appeared on People.com.
