little miracles in the world of hearing loss

little m's hearing aids are a constant battle. i'm sure you can imagine the joys of wrestling a teeny tiny hearing aid onto both the back and inside of baby ears. we have a wonderfully feisty baby (as i write this, she is screaming herself to sleep for a much needed morning nap), but that means the hearing aids do not go on without a fight. she recently discovered the power of her hands to grab them and pull, so she's now able to remove them, even though they are stuck onto the backs of her ears with wig tape. once they are actually on and she hasn't yanked them off, they feedback with a super high pitched tone every time she leans against something or moves in a way that they get jostled out of her ear canal. this happens constantly. 

i think it would be less frustrating to deal with them if we actually noticed a difference. people always ask us if we think she can hear us when they are on, and we always have to say no. at the beginning when we first got them, we'd make loud noises behind her to try and test them out and then since she did nothing in response, we stopped; too discouraging. the doctors have told us that it is highly unlikely that she is getting much sound at all from the hearing aids since her hearing loss is so profound, so there is a part of me that says, "what's the point?" at the same time, i know that there is value in putting them in, even if it is a pain and seems to do nothing. in the very least, they are hopefully stimulating that part of her brain so that it is getting some action and not atrophying. and i do hope that maybe little spots of noise are getting to her; i feel like it is selfish for me not to put them in, even as frustrating as it can be, when they may give her even a little sound. 

that brings me to this morning's little miracle. sometimes i try to put little m's hearing aids in when she is nursing, because she is happy and distracted, and won't try to move too much when i am adjusting them. as i put on her second hearing aid this morning, i sang her name to her (we try to reward her with sound as soon as we put them in so there is instant gratification and something positive for all of the poking and prodding we have to do to her). as soon as i sang, "M", she stopped, turned from nursing, and looked up at me with a smile. i couldn't help it, i was so surprised that i started crying. 

who knows, maybe it was a fluke that she turned right then. or maybe she heard my voice. i'll never know, but it was a gift to me. and hopefully, a gift to her too.