When motherhood comes with hearing loss

If my surgeon had told me after my operation that I would lose my hearing again, would I have had my babies?

Georgina Sierra. Source: Supplied

“Can’t you hear them?” my husband would say to me countless times when my children were in the next room crying for help. “Oh, are they crying?” I would reply and rush off to help them. I struggled to hear my babies cry. Even if my husband was sitting beside me, I would still be second-guessing what he was saying.

Being diagnosed with hearing loss was something I never thought would happen to me. Several of my paternal family members had lost their hearing. I always thought I would be one of the few in the family that would have escaped this condition. Yet a few months after my 30th birthday, my hearing deteriorated fast.

The tinnitus that I had become accustomed to living with was getting louder. If someone was talking to me in a noisy place or whispering in a quiet one, I couldn’t filter their voice to understand them. One day I noticed the left speaker in my car abruptly became muffled and quiet. It turned out the speaker in my car was working fine. It was my left ear telling me that it couldn’t send sound waves to my brain anymore.

I struggled to hear my babies cry.

Several tests and medical visits later, I received confirmation that I was to join the ranks of my hearing-impaired relatives. I had a progressive hearing loss condition called otosclerosis, which was quite advanced in my left ear. I went through a period of grief as it felt like someone had cut something from my body without my permission. For two years I wore a hearing aid, within which my hearing loss accelerated so fast that I resorted to having an operation — a stapedectomy — to restore it.

Afterward, my surgeon confirmed the procedure was successful. The stapes, a bone in the middle ear, was the cause of my hearing loss. It was so bad that a titanium prosthesis replaced my stapes, to salvage my hearing. He said if I hadn’t done the operation, I could become deaf in that ear. I had a newfound sense of hope with my restored hearing. The tinnitus I had before the operation was still there, at a lower intensity. Yet, it didn’t deter me from relearning sounds I forgot existed and rediscovering the world.

Living life with my newfound hearing was freeing. Three years after the operation, I got married and fell pregnant with my first child. Six months after giving birth to my son, I noticed the tinnitus was starting to get louder. When I was pregnant with my second child, the symptoms I had before my operation started to return and increased after I gave birth. It is thought that otosclerosis becomes exacerbated with pregnancy due to the high levels of oestrogen near term or postpartum. Yet I thought I was safe after the stapedectomy. It never crossed my mind that I would lose my hearing again, nor the magnitude of the loss.

Motherhood is challenging, exhausting and as frustrating as hearing loss. As I adapted to being a new mother, my surgeon confirmed that my pregnancies had aggravated my condition. I had to adapt to losing my hearing for the second time. To hear my children and others, I relearned the hearing skills I had before my operation. My senses are becoming sharper as I’m learning to hear without my ears, so to speak. I have learned to hear with my intuition so I can anticipate my children’s needs when I can’t hear them.

I now have an echoic memory of my babies’ voices.

Now that my eldest is four years old and he is learning new words, I struggle to hear if he is saying them correctly. He becomes as frustrated as I do, as I keep asking him to repeat himself. He is yet to understand that my hearing isn’t as good anymore. I feel disappointed that I can’t help my children with pronunciation. As a parent, you feel that you can help your kids with everything. Losing my hearing again has taught me that I can’t do it all. I now rely on my husband and my children’s childcare teachers to help with what I can’t hear.

I may be lucky to restore my hearing in the future through surgery, but for now, I am still grieving, albeit for the second time, for the loss of what I was lucky to briefly regain. If my surgeon had told me after my operation that I would lose my hearing again, would I have had my babies? The answer is, yes. With my restored hearing, I now have an echoic memory of my babies’ voices. I just think of when my children said their first word or made a cute sound and it all comes back like a well-known and beloved song. So if I go completely deaf one day, I will always have that treasure in my mind.