Former Miss America Heather Whitestone McCallum, saying she needed to hear her children talk, has undergone surgery that's expected to allow her to detect whispers.
McCallum, the first deaf woman to win the pageant in 1995, returned to her Atlanta home Thursday after receiving a cochlear implant in her right ear.
The Pelham native said she decided to have the operation when her 2-year-old son John fell in her back yard.
"I couldn't hear him crying," McCallum, now a 29-year-old wife and mother of two, told The Birmingham (Ala.) News. "Not being there for him really scared me."
A childhood bout with the haemophilus influenza virus and high fever left her with no hearing in her right ear and the ability to discern only low frequencies in her left.
McCallum said she had been happy using a hearing aid until the birth of her two sons. It enabled her to hear sirens and horns and some environmental sounds, but she couldn't hear her boys' speech.