After our initial diagnosis and learning that Ike did, in fact, have hearing loss, we asked, “what’s next?.” Our audiologist was great and told us our options. She explained that if it was our goal for Ike to listen and speak, then he needed access to sound as soon as possible.
[Did you know that the first 4 years of life are the most critical for literacy?? Studies show that kids, especially kids with hearing loss, should hear 40 million words by the age of 4 to lay the foundation for learning to listen and speak... More on this to come!]
This meant ordering hearing aids. She gave us a pamphlet of our hearing aid options from Phonak and said we could set another appointment to get ear molds taken, or we could do it right then. Of course Adam and I agreed we needed to do it right then. [Read more HERE about the process of getting ear molds and my tips on how to make it easy.]
We took the pamphlet home and started discussing what kind of hearing aids to get our son. This was something that never even crossed our minds that we would ever have to do. It’s something you would think you would have to discuss helping your parents get at some point, or even yourself one day as you get older.
We had absolutely no knowledge except the pamphlet in front of us and the advice from the audiologist we had just seen. Now, turns out there are many companies out there who make hearing aids, and I am sure that most of them are great and all have their good qualities. The company used where we are is Phonak. Phonak was highly recommended by the audiologist we saw, and we really wanted to get the hearing aids ordered ASAP, so we decided not to look into other companies and just use what was provided to us. (Luckily, Phonak has been great for us, so no regrets on this decision.)
There wasn’t a whole lot of options for Phonak hearing aid models for small babies, so it was fairly simple to choose that. We went with the Phonak Sky B. They would be perfect to grow with him as he grew into a little kid.
If you can believe it, the COLOR is what was probably the hardest choice. Since the Phonak Sky B hearing aids are designed for children, they come in all these fun colors, like green, purple, red, blue, and pink. Of course, they also come in your basic black, white, and tan.
We finally narrowed our decision to between blue and tan. Blue because of Ike’s beautiful blue eyes and tan because of his blonde hair. We were unsure if we wanted to go all in and have the blue hearing aids that would make a statement or if we wanted the tan that would blend in better with Ike’s blonde hair. Of course I was also thinking of how well they might match with various outfits (I know, ridiculous!). Blue might not match everything, but tan would!
Eventually, we decided to go with the tan. We decided we could have fun with the color of the ear mold while leaving the hearing aid part neutral. Most insurance will replace or update hearing aids about every 5 years or so. We figured we would choose the conservative tan color since we would have it for several years and have fun with the ear molds which we could change often. (Don’t worry, when Ike is five, he will be able to help pick out his hearing aid color for himself!)
Looking back now, it seems so silly that we had so much trouble deciding on the color of the hearing aid. I guess the takeaway is that there are times in your life when there are a lot of decisions to be made when you might not feel ready to make them. During these times, it is easy to focus your energy on the minutiae and things that feel familiar. My advice would be to take comfort in keeping the process moving forward. Let the small things be small and trust that the big things will work out just as they should.
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