Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a mother who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a woman and a mother. Above all, the Mom of the Month is dedicated to her children. Rich or poor, famous or not, she shines as an example of what mothering is all about.

Our choice for February is actress Kassie DePaiva, star of ABC's "One Life to Live" and the mother of one son.

On ABC’s daytime drama “One Life to Live,” Kassie DePaiva plays power-hungry Blair Cramer, ready to cause any amount of trouble to get what she wants.

In that respect, the actress has little in common with her character. But there are some similarities: the actor who plays Blair Cramer’s husband, James DePaiva, is Kassie’s real-life husband. His character, Max Holden, has a deaf son, Frank. And when Kassie and James learned that their real-life son was also deaf, the irony was almost too much to grasp.

“It seems almost surreal that this was happening to us,” Kassie says. “We didn’t know where to turn.”

A Silent Problem
After a difficult pregnancy and a “piece-of-cake” Cesarean delivery, James Quentin DePaiva, or J.Q., was born May 12, 1997. At 9 pounds, J.Q. was determined to be a healthy baby, and Kassie was delighted.

“During my recovery, I was sore and everything but I had this little baby and it was wonderful,” she says. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to have a baby.”

After circumcision, J.Q. developed a fever and spent three days in the neonatal intensive care unit. He underwent and passed all the typical tests, and was released to go home with his family. J.Q. had experienced his first few days outside the womb in a whirlwind of new sights and sensations. But Kassie and James – along with the doctors who cared for their baby – had no idea that J.Q.’s world was entirely silent.

A Frightening Discovery
During the first few months of his life, J.Q. visited a pediatrician for routine check-ups – none of which revealed his deafness, caused by an enlarged vestibular aqueduct.

“Jimmy and I both would go, ‘I don’t think he can hear. He’s not turning around,’” Kassie says. “And then he’d turn around because he’s so socially aware and we’d say, ‘Oh, he can hear.’”

These episodes continued throughout the first year of J.Q.’s life, until Kassie felt it was time to investigate. After months of silence from inside his mother’s womb and nearly a year without sound from the world around him, a quick and simple hearing test confirmed it: J.Q. had never heard his mother’s voice, a lullaby or any of the sounds of the hearing world.

Kassie was traumatized.

“We went through a week of a mourning period of not so much his lost hopes and dreams – because he can’t miss what he never had – but it was my dreams for him,” Kassie says.

“You have your own little pity party and then you get up and do it,” she says. “When you’re at work and you’re trying to maintain this persona on set and this persona over television and you have this going on in your life, you have to keep a stuff upper lip.”

Kassie with husband James, son J.Q. and step-daughter Dreama Marie.

Knowing where to turn was a challenge.

“There’s nothing in the yellow pages that says, ‘Here’s where you call if your child can’t hear.’”

Kassie, remembering the deaf actor who plays Frank on “One Life to Live,” called the show’s on-set signing coach for advice. As a result of her conversation with him, J.Q. was immediately fitted with high-powered hearing aids. But because he was nearly 1 year old, Kassie was in a race against time that had already been lost.

“When you decide to take action, you want it all done yesterday,” she says. “The time lost is so precious.”

The result of the hearing aids was immediate, and J.Q. suddenly learned that the world is full of sounds – dogs barking and doors slamming – and how to differentiate among them. He later received cochlear implants, which are tiny, internal microphones that enhance his ability to detect environmental sounds. The hope is that J.Q. will better understand conversation at normal levels and gradually improve his own speech skills.

But the work never ends, as J.Q. – with his parents’ help – tries to catch up on the crucial development that he missed.

“My son has eleven hours of speech therapy a week and we work with him at home,” Kassie says. “But my goodness, it’s so worth it.”

A Dream Reclaimed
Life is now taking on an air of normalcy for the DePaivas. J.Q. is preparing to attend mainstream preschool in September, and Kassie is realizing the potential for her son to lead a fulfilling – and hearing – life. She says that realization is rewarding on even the smallest levels.

“The most beautiful thing is that I never thought he would hear me say ‘I love you,’ and I definitely thought I would never hear him say ‘I love you’ to me,” she says. “But now it’s something we say about 80 times a day.”

When Kassie discovered these statistics through research, she was shocked.

“Now that I have been introduced, I think it’s criminal in this country that babies are tested for everything else, but not for hearing.”

Currently, 22 states have enacted legislation mandating newborn hearing screening for all infants. The cause appears to be gaining momentum, as 12 of those states passed legislation in 1999.

Yet the District of Columbia and more than half the states in the U.S. are without legislation requiring infant hearing screening. Kassie encourages everyone she knows to be a voice for change in Washington, D.C. and the remaining 28 states.

“Write to your senators and congressman and get the word to your pediatrician and the hospitals,” she says. “A newborn screening is a very inexpensive procedure. It’s non-invasive. But the difference between finding out at birth and finding out later is an extreme difference in price.”

A Mother Like Any Other
Kassie lives her life in the spotlight of daytime television, a busy and successful actress watched by millions every day. But Kassie says she is – first and foremost – a mother. And motherhood has changed her in ways she could not have anticipated.

“I think motherhood makes you invincible. It makes you feel like you can do anything,” she says. “It makes women stronger, and you really have sense a power that you never had before.”

Not only is Kassie a mother; she’s the mother of a special-needs child who requires extra time and energy each day. But she says she truly loves every moment with her son, and the smile on her face is audible when she calls him “perfect.”

“I wouldn’t change my little boy for anything in the world. It’s just the way God wants him to be,” Kassie says. “I know that he will change people’s lives because of it. He already has.”