My 13 month old was born with a cleft lip and palate which have now both been corrected. As part of his treatment he has regular hearing tests and we always knew it was likely he'd need grommets or a hearing aid in the future but I just wasn't expecting to be told at his test yesterday that he now needs to wear a bone conduction hearing aid at all times when he's awake.
I know it's brilliant they've picked it up early, and it's so important for his speech and language, but I just feel so incredibly sad that we've just got through surgery and now he has this to contend with. I think I also feel so sad that for the first 5 months of his life he looked a bit different to 'normal' babies and now he has this very visible headband he'll look different again and people will notice that before his gorgeous smile (he is a very very smiley baby).
Has anyone else had this happen and is it something you do get used to? He's obviously also not a fan of wearing his headband either so he only wore it for maybe 3 or 4 hours today but I don't know if that's ok to start with; my appointment was quite rushed so I didn't feel like the audiologist gave me any advice, although she said she was referring us to somewhere for support and advice.