A mother's perspective

Being told your baby has something wrong with her, comes as a shock at first. Denial is common, anger, fear and the need to protect your child from the potential hurts down the road become your main focus. As I reflect back...nothing was wrong with her at all, this is part of her that makes her who she is. She is not her hearing loss, but her hearing loss has taught us all so much about true resilience.

Every emotion came up for us in the first days of learning about Hannah's hearing loss when she was 4 months old. At 8 months she got her first set of hearing aids and boy do I wish we had known to have a video of her first experience hearing my voice. It was magical...she lit up and tried to find where my voice was coming from, because I was behind her at the time she heard me for the first time...no visual cues.  You see, children are so resilient. They adapt so well to what is going on in their world, it is often us as parents who learn from our own children just how capable we all are to rise above our challenges. This is part of human nature...we strive to survive and adapt!

Fast forward to today...she is now 13 years old (and yes I have so much more to say right now because many emotions are flooding back right now with her just days away from surgery to have bilateral cochlear implants.) Rather than writing a novel here in the first blog post, I will share my words from a Facebook live last week about where Hannah is currently. Hearing her confidence and certainty, helps this moma feel better. Interesting how things sometimes shift...letting our children take the lead in important areas of decision is so empowering for them and we learn so much as parents too!