First Hearing Aids

Let's jump into this.

I remember that day and we were excited but nervous to go to the audiology centre. My sister in law took the three of us there.

From my understanding, (I am rubbish at the correct terminology) there are 3 hearing aids available on the NHS. Eli was supposed to have the first level on his first pair but they decided that they wouldn't be strong enough so went for the middle level. In reality no hearing aid was really going to be enough for Eli's hearing levels but it's a process and you have to go through it. We picked out metallic blue as Eli's colour of choice. They honestly were adorable.

We had been told not to expect any reactions but you see so many beautiful videos online of children having amazing reactions that you can't not have this at the back of your mind.

When we got there Eli was asleep. He was a small 7 week old baby. They hooked his hearing aids up to the computer and set his levels. Because Eli has different levels on each side each hearing aid is set accordingly.

They then showed us how to put them in and take them out. I remember how gentle I was in the beginning I was so scared to break them. They showed us how to clean them, how to remove the batteries and test the batteries. Explained that we had to test them every day to make sure they were working and to listen for a whistle sound because that would mean Eli's moulds were to small. They gave us a little bag to fit everything in. I used to carry this bag around with us in the early days as well and lots of leaflets. This was a lot of information before anything had happened.

Then came the switch on. Eli was still Asleep in my arms.  They put the hearing aids in Eli's ears and closed the battery compartment. We heard them come on and Eli stayed asleep. They made some noise to make sure nothing was uncomfortable and Eli stayed asleep.

This felt really strange. We knew he wouldn't react. We were told he wouldn't react. We had prepared ourselves for no reaction. But still when your actually in the moment and there's no reactions. It opens a lot of questions for us and with every stage so far no actual answers. I struggle with uncertainty like this. This in itself did create a lot of anxiety for me.

Eli was booked in for another hearing test about 4 weeks later. The centre was moving to a new facility and they needed to settle in there. To be honest it was nice to enjoy our baby without tests and to get used to handling the hearing aids.

As always thank you for reading.

Jane
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