Eight months of HOH mommy-hood--- draft that never posted

My baby girl is turning eight months old tomorrow. I can't believe it! Her personality is just starting to shine through. Her grins and giggles that expose her two itty-bitty teeth melt my heart. Along my brief but ongoing journey in motherhood, I've learned so much about myself. Some of what I have learned thus far pertains directly to my hearing loss. Ella has never been a huge crier, fortunately. However, when Ella was about 4 months old the volume and intensity of her cry changed dramatically in a period that seemed overnight. With that came a whole new irritant for my aided ears. Her cry made my hearing aids attempt to compress the sound. See, the higher frequencies are the ones I can't hear unaided. My hearing aids try to amplify these loud enough for me to hear them. However, if the sound present is a high frequency but already pretty loud on it's own, the hearing aid amplifies it but quickly responds and tries to compress it to a level that prevents further damage to my ears. This results in a very loud, distorted noise that I can't accurately describe. It's like static but far more loud and annoying. This phenomenon is not new. Never before, though, has the source of such an irritant been someone I love as much as my baby.

18 months later as a HOH mom

A busy 18 months of mommyhood has kept me away from this blog. I thought it was time to revisit :-). My greatest challenge and greatest joy are one and the same: my daughter Ella. While everything about first-time mommyhood is brand-new and often terrifying, I am now seeing Ella's personality blossom and know that I was simply born to be her mom. My hearing loss has added an additional hurdle at times to mommyhood thus far. Most notably, I had thought that a baby monitor was super necessary and I even researched about and purchased one that vibrated for those times when I would be aid-less. It became very apparent after the first couple weeks of use that it was not going to work for my purposes. In order to hear it, I would have to have the volume at a level that my husband couldn't tolerate. He said he could hear her breathing and it was interrupting his sleep. So, slowly, I began to trust my hubby to be my monitor for those rare times when I wouldn't hear Ella. Remarkably, despite my hearing loss, I somehow rarely miss her cries. It sounds cliche but it's as if I gained a sixth sense when I became a mother. I had some issues, however, with the volume of baby cries and noises. I suffer from hyperacusis which has always made some noises particularly bothersome but until I became a parent I could take steps to eradicate those noises that bothered me. In the case of loud, crying baby, that was not an option. I had to find new ways of coping to my noise sensitivity which took some adjustment. I have become a huge fan of my hearing aids' mute button. Previous models of aids I have owned had required the complete removal of my aids from my ear and then the removal of the battery for a complete off mode. These new aids (as in the ones I have had for about 3 years now) have a mute setting so a push of a button turns them both off. I didn't realize how crazy invaluable something like this option was until Ella arrived and even later, when she began screaming and screeching just for fun :-). As I had imagined, wearing hearing aids while administering a bath has gradually become impossible. Ella has taken to splashing water as she's entered toddlerhood. I have to remove the hearing aids and generally just keep them out through the entire bedtime routine. It actually makes me enjoy the cuddling more when I use all my other senses and read to her without my aids on. I can't really explain what I mean. I just allow myself to tune out the world at the end of each day with her. There was a brief period where Ella "discovered" Mommy's aids in her ears. This was quite the challenge. There's nothing like the tenacity of a curious baby. First, her little hands coming near my aids would cause feedback or loud squealing from the speakers. It would bother me tremendously as it always has but it would also startle her, initially. Slowly, she became kind of fascinated with the cause and effect of this little game. She also desperately wanted to pull them out to inspect them. Fortunately, with patience that I mustered up from somewhere deep within, I got used to the game just in time for her to realize the aids are always there and lose interest altogether. I have had a severe anxiety associated with my hearing aid batteries and Ella. I still do, even more so now that she can easily reach, climb and rummage through the majority of our house and belongings. I am trying to find good hiding places for my aids in my car and house. I have stopped carrying any in my purse as my purse is now one of Ella's favorite things to empty. I think the chance of Ella swallowing my aid batteries will be a huge source of fear for me probably until she's moved out of the house. No joke. Ella and I took a series of baby sign language classes when she was an infant. She now utilizes several signs and recognizes dozens more. She really enjoys it and I do, too. Her speech is usually clear when she is saying actual words but I know that signs do fill in the gap when I can't hear what she's saying the first or second time. I do wonder how much of my insistence on sign was in someway selfish but it's working for us. I had a really sensitive moment with a friend of a friend recently. I was just having one of those insane weeks everyone has from time to time where it seems everything is going wrong and nothing is working the way it should. I was particularly raw going into our conversation about our insecurities as moms. Hard-of-hearing or not, moms have plenty of them and they are often very similar. Then, I brought up my insecurity about being a hard-of-hearing mom. How my disability will affect Ella? Will it frustrate her or make her feel different than her peers? My friend's friend said something so simple and she said it with such an honest heart. She immediately told me that she thought my hearing loss would be an asset for Ella. I was already in need of a good cry so naturally, that is what finally got the tears flowing. I hope she's right. I hope it for my daughter's sake. I think the more I accept my loss the more it has the potential to be an asset for my daughter. And, for that reason, I soldier on and continue to embrace it for what is, a small part of who I am as both a person and a mother.