Proud mum shares her childrens' amazing audiology experience

Proud mum shares her childrens' amazing audiology experience

4th Mar 2021

Proud hearing aid wearers and siblings Llewyn, Edith and Enna enjoy everything their peers do thanks to the support of their family and amazing audiology team

In the words of mum Rikki “In 2014 we welcomed our little boy Llewyn into the world. Our joy was followed with heartbreak as he failed his newborn hearing test, within two weeks he was diagnosed with sloping bilateral sensori-neuro hearing loss to a severe degree. His sister, Edith followed in 2016 and our fears were confirmed as she was the same. In 2019 and we welcomed another little girl, Enna. She has also joined her siblings and now all 3 wear hearing aids. The guilt and sheer fear when we first heard the words, was indescribable. I actually asked if they could take my cochlear and somehow donate it. But something amazing happened and all our pre-misconceptions of what an individual who has hearing loss could and couldn’t achieve, were totally wrong. 

Alder hey Audiology is a safe place for our family, we are there every six weeks and are so familiar with the team, we have their number on speed dial for the times that a hearing aid has been hoovered/chewed or hidden in a toy kettle for weeks! Through regular hearing tests (which let me tell you is not easy with children who simply cannot tell if they can hear a beep or not) all our children speak clearly, enjoy school and nursery, have great friends, enjoy sports and are extremely proud hearing aid wearers.

We have chosen to raise them with British sign language, as we’d like them to have access to the deaf community and be proud of who they are, but we also utilise the technology available at Alder Hey with each one having a microphone FM radio to support learning and extremely colourful choices of hearing aids and moulds, the audiologists are extremely patient are accommodating to their interesting choices.

As a family we feel that we were blessed by our children, they have taught us so much and how to really listen when you cannot hear. We are fortunate that they have been born in a time where hearing loss is not a stigma and research and technology are so advanced that they are proud of who they are and we owe a lot of that to the Audiology team.”