Impending labour symptom # 2

Second note to self: if, in a future pregnancy, your hearing suddenly starts to return for no reason at all, be very wary.

Again, about two weeks before I gave birth to our son, I noticed the residual hearing in my right ear start to improve slightly. The first sign of this was in the shower – I could hear the water running over my hair. (Very faint and crackly, mind you, but the sound was there nonetheless.) Then I noticed I could hear cupboards closing, without having to slam them. I could hear Jase talking in my ear, though I couldn’t understand his words. And, finally, I could hear the dial tone of the telephone (with volume full blast, and the receiver held in a very precise location over my ear).

I pointed out this weirdness to my audiologist, who, at my 12-month CI review, actually conducted a proper hearing test to assess what was happening. Sure enough, the slight residual hearing that I have in my right ear had improved a little in certain frequencies. In one of the lower frequencies, for example, I was now registering tones at 65 decibels – before the surgery, they needed to be 90-100 for me to hear them. How very bizarre.

This jump in hearing disappeared immediately after the birth. Now I doubt there’s any medical reason to support that, and I can’t say it would happen to anybody else who wears CIs, but I’m firmly connecting it to the approach of labour in my particular case. Something else I’ll keep in mind for next time!