A Fortnight of Firsts

We, as any young family, experience many firsts, but for us, the last two weeks have brought some real significant ones. Our first night away from the children at a posh hotel, first time of having friends babysit rather than our 'halmonie'. The first time of putting hearing aids into a child's ear. But the most exciting, the first day of Isobel wearing hearing aids all day, and this has lead into the first weekend of Isobel wearing them.

It has been an amazing weekend! Isobel has only pulled out her hearing aids once, the whole weekend and that was yesterday in the car on the way home from the supermarket. She even kept them in whilst at a birthday party in a kids cafe which was brilliant. Today she has hardly touched them. In fact when the behind the ear part has fallen forward today she has asked either Nick or I to fix her special ears. I am so proud.

Isobel is already saying new words and both Nick and myself have experienced a conversation with her. It was fantastic. She has been so happy and watching her play, chat and read with her little sister has brought tears to my eyes.




We did however have a big concern about losing the hearing aids. When she goes to school she will not have eagle eyed Mum and Dad checking every second that she hasn't taken them out and flushed them down the toilet. To combat this, we have bought several glasses cords. The loops that you would normally put on the arms of your glasses, we have put on the tubes of Isobel's hearing aids. Then we just pin the cord to her shirt, so they would dangle down her back should she pull them out. Today I threaded the cord through the hair band on the end of Isobel's braid, I think pinning it to her shirt might work better.

We have also begun our AVT homework. After Skyping with our Auditory-Verbal (AV) therapist on Friday we were set homework to help Isobel prepare for and understand the task when completing a hearing test. Something that she will be doing a lot of in the future. This was us playing a 'game' that will eventually simulate the hearing test.

You'll agree she's doing pretty well. We lifted the bowl up off the floor for subsequent games so she was hearing the sound rather than 'feeling' it. She seemed to get the game quite quickly and enjoy it. It's just as well really as we'll be playing it every day for a while. Once she gets really good at it we have to start varying the different sounds - I hope our neighbours won't mind too much!