My baby was born at a midwifery. They do not do hearing tests; they only recommend that you get one at your pediatrician.

My pediatrician's office doesn't do them in office, and since she responds to a wide range of sounds, I never put much thought to it. But now she's five months old, my pediatrician keeps insisting I go get a test, so far as to make a referral without my request, and have his office staff call me repeatedly to make sure I scheduled with the referred office, which is both far from where I live and I don't even know how well my insurance will cover it. I had my husband call about the appointment, and found that they would sedate her if she came in now! I didn't go through a completely unmedicated delivery to turn around and drug her later! So I cancelled.

So I decided to do some more reading about the test. It turns out that not only do children often fail the tests due to non-hearing-related reasons (and then get referred for more testing for no reason), babies can also pass the hearing screening just fine and still actually have hearing loss.

I feel that I would rather forego the hearing tests altogether. She responds to a variety of sounds, including ones that you definitely can't feel in the floor. If she can't see me and she is crying, she will stop crying if I sing her favorite song--even when I'm still out of sight.

So my real question is, since most of you probably had the hearing screening done early, what did it do for you? Were they accurate? Did it help?

And can my pediatrician really do anything if I refuse to get her hearing tested?