Hearing Aids second time round

This was from 27/5/2012

 

My little H had her hearing aids fitted last week. It was the best moment of my life. That it itself makes me want to vomit. Let me tell you what happened.

It was one of those events that I didn’t know I felt stressed about until the morning of it when I couldn’t stop crying and still didn’t quite know why. My Mum was here to look after Will while I took Harri on my own but due to the waterfall that was my face her and W ended up coming with me. The tube line we needed to get was down. The other one takes longer. Longer to get to the station, longer on the tube. Someone pulled the passenger alarm. We were late and sweaty and oh.so.stressed. But I had managed to stop crying.

 

We have recently changed hospitals and the new one is amazing. Rocking horses in the reception. A whole floor of toys and games for the kids while they wait. A-maz-ing. Will was happy, Harri was sleeping. Things were looking up.

 

We were called in for our appointment and the audiologist went about the usual tests. Checking her ears for wax, looking at her ear drum to check for holes, etc, etc. Poor Will was so baffled why it was all happening to Harriet and not him.

 

And then came the moment. My Mum was holding her as Will played in the corner and I had an eye on both of them. They attached her tiny perfect moulds to the hearing aids and put them in her ears. And then they turned them on. And she began to laugh. A laugh that came from deep in her tummy. One of those wonderful giggles that only children can do. The ones that make your heart swell. She had never laughed before. The audiologist was talking, my Mum was talking, she was listening and she was laughing.

 

I was sobbing.

 

It was the most heart breakingly beautiful moment.

 

Genetics Part 1: A love affair

Since we found out about Will’s hearing deficit I have blamed myself. It’s hard not to. The way I saw it, I built him in my body and it was my body that had failed him by building that particular bit to a substandard level. I use the past tense in that there sentence because I no longer feel like that to that extent. It’s taken a lot of time and blogging but I have, for the most part, accepted that we can’t change it and blaming my self was helping no-one.

We recently learnt that Will definitely has Pendred’s Syndrome; a genetic defect affecting his vestibular aqueduct and cochlea.

For this to happen, Shaun and I both have to carry a gene defect that when paired with the same, create the syndrome. It has to have been in both of our families for generations, hiding silently. Lurking.

We had known this was a potential reason for Will’s hearing loss for sometime. I sometimes thought that I would resent him if this was so. I thought I would resent the universe for bringing us together. I thought I would be angry. And I thought I would doubt our relationship and our future.

None of these things happened.

I felt guilt. Horrible, drowning, suffocating guilt. I felt sorry. So very, very sorry. Sorry for saying hello on the stairs. Sorry for sending flirtatious emails (we met at work). Sorry for letting him fall in love with me. Sorry for having the gene that, when it met him, meant he had disabled children. Sorry for not being one of the millions of other girls he could have met. Sorry for having the gene. Sorry for ruining his life, for making it that much harder, for causing him all this pain.

Guilt; a mother’s ruin.

But not sorry I met him. Not angry I met him. Not sorry I fell in love with him. Not angry that he made my children disabled. I felt bad for him but not bad for myself.

It made me love him that much more. There is no-one I would rather travel this journey with.