If you have an infant wearing hearing aids, then you know how incredible it is to have your child hear your voice clearly for the first time. However, you might also know that dealing with hearing aids and an infant can be tricky.

Having to keep hearing aids in a baby’s ears can pose unique challenges. If you are new to the hearing loss world you might be wondering how to handle some tricky situations. 

Two of my three children have hearing loss that was detected by the newborn hearing test on day two of life. With the early detection, we were able to start the process to get my children their hearing aids early in life. For my son, he had his hearing aids at 3-months-old. For my daughter, she received them at 4 months of age.

Here are the areas that we found challenging for our infants wearing hearing aids and practical solutions that we actually used to help.

In today’s video I am sharing with you why I decided to learn sign language with my family and how it has been beneficial for my son Harry.

Harry is deaf, but wears a cochlear implant. Even though he can hear with his hearing technology, and we communicate orally, we also use sign language with him. 

Are talking toys for deaf children naughty or nice?

If you walk into a toy store this holiday season, chances are you may be bombard with repetitive tunes, mechanical voices and motorized movements. Toys that make sound are all the rage these days, and may times children are attracted to them. 

But are noisy toys a good option for children with hearing loss? 

When Oliver’s mom Macey shared photos of her son with us on Instagram (@ohboyoliver), we instantly fell in love with the little guy.

Macey was gracious enough to share her family’s story:

Having a child first be diagnosed with hearing loss can feel like a completely new world, especially if you haven’t experienced hearing loss in your family before.

Around 90% of all children born with hearing loss have normal hearing parents, so this situation is actually quite common.

Whether the diagnosis came as a surprise or confirmed your suspicion, you will most likely be confronted with many questions coming from all sides – your family members, friends, random people on the street, work colleagues: “Is your child deaf or is your child hard of hearing? What degree of hearing impairment does he/she have? Can he/she attend regular school or must he/she go to a school for deaf children? Will he/she wear hearing aids? Are you learning sign language to communicate with him/her?”

When my baby boy was born, I looked at him nestled in my arms through teary, tired eyes and knew he was worth the pain. But when he failed his newborn hearing screening numerous times our world really was turned upside down.

Being profoundly deaf, we quickly found out that Harry couldn’t hear a thing. It broke my heart thinking about the months spent talking to my bump and realizing that he hadn’t heard a word. The little competence I had gained during those early weeks as a first-time mum had been completely diminished. I was suddenly thrown into the unknown, where nobody I knew had ever been.

Infants who were breastfed directly, rather than feeding pumped milk from a bottle, were seen to be less at risk for ear infections, according to a new study by researchers at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. 

Nearly 500 women participated in the one-month study, which found feeding at the breast was associated with a 4 percent reduction in the odds of ear infection.

A cochlear implant may look incredibly simple to put on and take off but the assembly behind them and the care that they need can be a little overwhelming, especially on a baby or toddler!

When we were first sent home with the full Advanced Bionics kit we wondered where on earth we were going to store all of this stuff (and whether we would actually need half the things in the box day-to-day).

After Harry had his cochlear implant operation I found myself flooded with messages of congratulations that Harry could now hear. Unfortunately, of course, this wasn’t quite the case just yet. The operation was just the beginning and without the external hardware Harry still wasn’t able to access sound.  It took a while to explain this to people,  and on top of it was the fact we had no idea how successful the op would be until his “magic ears” were activated.

The big ‘switch on’ loomed over us like a ridiculously exciting – but nerve wrecking – bubble. We could barely sleep with the anticipation of what the day might bring. 

I found myself watching endless videos on YouTube of other babies and adults having their cochlear implants activated, which made that bubble of emotion almost explode. It’s so amazing to see some of the dramatic reactions that you can get from people on their activation day, however it’s also important to remember that everybody responds completely differently.

In fact, most babies and children have barely any reaction at all.  I realized quite quickly that I needed to calm down a bit and that it was quite likely we wouldn’t see the huge reaction we had first expected from Harry when he heard his first sound.