Love, bubs and life on our little farm

So you most probably know that my littlest munchkin has been diagnosed with permanent hearing loss in both ears. It is at the mild level so she can hear, it is just not clear how much she hears of soft sounds in spoken words and also what she can distingush in a noisy background.

She wears hearing aids to help bring her hearing up to the normal level. But convincing a bub to wear hearing aids is not an easy thing - she pulls them out and drops them, she eats them, she isn't allowed to wear them in the car and she whinges about me putting them back in. So its a battle. She pulls off hats/headbands and anything else we can think of as a bit of a barrier. We have lost one in the paddock and took a long time to find it again. Most days I just concentrate on making sure she has them on for a period of time that I am sitting with her, talking, singing and playing with her. When she doesn;t have them on, I speak as clear as I can and make sure she gets eye contact and a lot of facial expression from me.

She sees her paeds, her Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, her audiologist and now her speech therapist regularly. Elka has learned to love doctors surgeries and eagerly anticipates playing with their toys. So far Elka has been good about not being the centre of attention but the day she got her own hearing tested (just to be sure) was pretty exciting for her I think! (we now have to play pretend hearing tests/doctors with her endlessly).

Bronte seems to be developing well. She is shy and tends to stare at people with her big owl like eyes for a long time before she will thaw and give a sweet smile, but no one is sure if that is to do with her hearing or if it is just her personality anyway. She can startle if you come up behind and she hasn't heard you, and sometimes she is hard to get to look over at you if you are far away and saying her name. But other than that she is no different to care for than Elka.

She had an assessment yesterday with her Speech Pathologist and came through with flying colours. She mimics sounds (particularly Elka's yells, they match pitch and tone of each other), she says Mum, Bub and Dad, she anticipates spinning if I count 1, 2, 3 spin! She loves noisy toys and bangs things to make noise, she giggles and reacts happily to Elka, Jase or I if we say or do things and in the last two days she has even started saying More when she is eating and wants more.

It is a relief that she is doing so well but it only quells the Mummy worry a little. Of course I worry over her development, how she will be with hearing aids in the future, how other kids will treat her (will Elka tease her, since siblings tend to pick on each others weaknesses at times?), how school will go, high school, what if she is sporty but the hearing aids are a disadvantage... and the other day I had a new realisation. I was in line behind a 20 yr old girl who had hearing aids like Bronte and it sunk in that Bronte will be wearing the aids forever. It is hard to get around that this is something that will likely never be "fixed", there are no antibiotics or operations for this. Not only that but the government subsidy for the cost of her hearing aids runs out when she turns 21, after that apparently they are hideously expensive to maintain yourself...

Most of all, I realise that its all for me to come to terms with. Because Bronte and Elka will grow up with this and have never known anything else. Whereas I come into this with preconceptions . In fact I was plunged into this from the smugness of a parent who had given birth to a healthy little baby (Elka) who passed every test with flying colours and hit milestones far earlier than expected etc.

And I had to realise something - that everyone's wish for a perfect "healthy" baby is not as crucial as we might think when we rub our tummy's and say it as though its that simple. "Oh I don't mind about sex/eye colour/hair/size, just as long as its healthy." Because getting a bub that isn't technically perfect and healthy doesn't stop your little one from being the most precious amazing thing that you will ever love and that you get the accompanying bonus of a whole heap of humbling life lessons.