Abby's Hearing Aids are Finally In!

Abigail's hearing aids came in just one week after our first ear mold impressions. Our audiologist had pre-programmed them specifically for Abigail's hearing loss and disabled the exterior volume button (so that Abigail wouldn't be able to turn them up/off accidentally). We arrived very eager and couldn't wait to see what they looked like, we were also very excited to see her reaction when she finally heard our voices for the first time! The audiologist spent almost an hour explaining our warranty, operation, how to care for the aids, etc. Oticon (the manufacturer of our hearing aids) will replace the hearing aids one time in the first year regardless of the cause of damage or loss. After that we were advised to talk to our home owners' insurance provider to see if we could set up some sort of rider on our policy to protect their loss. Since her hearing aids were $4000 and our health insurance only pays for a new pair once every four years, we need to have some sort of backup protection.



Our audiologist put them in for the first time and turned them on. Abigail seemed startled and started to cry. This made me really sad as I had expected giant smiles from this little two month old baby who was truly "hearing" for the first time. Our audiologist then took them out so that we could practice putting them in and taking them out by ourselves. It was really hard, I felt like I couldn't get the mold in her ear and they just kept whistling at me. The whistling was really surprising to us, I guess we never really understand how much feedback there would be when the aids were turned on. Feedback is a result of the sound that the aid amplifies leaking out of the inner ear and amplified a second time by the aid--it sounds similar to the feedback you sometimes hear on a microphone in an auditorium. Young babies are very susceptible to this feedback since they aren't able to support themselves yet--feedback is intensified by being too close to something or someone else (i.e. being held). The feedback was so bad that I left the office that day crying. My expectations were unrealistic. I did not expect that this new world of sound would be scary or annoying to her, I did not expect their to be so much work involved in caring for her aids and last but not least, I did not expect that their would be so much feedback for poor little ears.



I didn't know how I was going to do this, we had just left and I already hated her aids.