Bubblegum Ears

Emily got her ear mold impressions taken yesterday as the first step in getting her hearing aids.  So far my favorite thing about our early intervention team is that all the meetings take place at our home!  With as many appointments as we have it's nice to not have to drag everyone out and add travel time to our day.  So yesterday we met the audiologist we'll be working with for the first time.  We learned a lot.  And know that we still have a lot to learn.  Her hearing aids will have a little plastic piece that fits inside her ear that helps hold it in place-this is custom fit to her ear and called the ear mold.  The hearing aid itself will be the kind that  sits behind her ear and fits around it. Since the aids go behind the ear and not in it they don't have to be custom fit and thankfully will last a while (as the hearing aid is the REALLY expensive part), like around five years. The ear molds will have to be replaced often as she grows--probably every 2-3 months for the first years of her life (these are thankfully a much more reasonable amount to replace that often). 

The term "bubblegum ears" came from Noah as he watched them take her ear mold impressions.  They used a substance that looked a lot like silly putty.  One white and one pink.  The two were mixed together to start some type of reaction (so it would harden) and then squirted it into her ear.  After a while it hardened and when it was taken out it kept the shape of the inside of her ear.  While it sat in her ear it looked like she had bright pink bubblegum in her ears and Noah called her bubblegum ears.  She slept through the whole thing.

It takes 2 weeks to get the ear molds back so the audiologist is planning to come back to fit her for her hearing aids in 2 weeks--that's on Halloween.  She'll be just over 3 months old then. WOW!  It's amazing what technology is available.  After talking with the audiologist this week we learned that the technology that was used to detect and determine the specifics of Emily's type of hearing loss was only perfected in the last 5 years.  And the technology that is available to allow to isolate and program for amplification at only certain frequencies within the hearing aids is newly developed also.  In other words, if she was born 5-10 years ago we probably wouldn't have known she had a hearing problem until she was struggling in elementary school and even then the technology may not have existed to get her the type of hearing aid to best suit her needs.