Imagine a world without the singing of birds or more specifically, a life in which you couldn't hear them, or the crush of rush hour, or the approach of an airplane.

For Sarah McBride and her family from Palo Alto, the last five years have been an aural awakening.

All were born deaf.

But today, Sarah, her son tucker and daughter Samantha heard the world through two ears for the first time.

This morning, at the California Ear Institute in Palo Alto, they literally had second sets of ears turned on. From being the first family to receive cochlear implants in one ear -- now they have them in two.

The device comes in two components -- a microphone transmitter, worn outside the skin, and a stimulator receiver worn in.

Becky Highlander, audiologist: "It's a process where you take a series of sound, low and high pitches, and you program them for every patient to hear."

But every ear responds differently. This tuning process requires the brain to find pathways it had not used before. Initially, words might sound like beeps but not for long.

Samantha McBride, cochlear implant recipient: "High pitch but very soft. Now I can hear high, low, medium, everything."

Doctors have performed cochlear implants since the 1980's, but for each patient, it is no less of a miracle, not when a world that had been silent becomes vibrant.

By Wayne Freedman
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=4224429