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!

Impending labour symptom # 1

Our son was born one month premature, as I think I might have mentioned on here. It is tricky, in a first pregnancy, to recognise genuine labour symptoms. For me, there were a couple of major hearing-related ones that I’ll be sure not to ignore the next time around.

The first one?

When tinnitus starts roaring for seemingly no reason at all, recognise that there are serious hormonal issues at play and be prepared!

My tinnitus is always present but it is reasonably quiet when both processors are on. However, about two weeks before I gave birth to our son, those ringing and roaring sounds became so loud and distracting that I barely had the energy to try and listen over them.

I’ll never forget the silence that greeted me the morning after my c-section. At first I thought I wasn’t wearing my processors … but I was. Then I realised what was so different – the tinnitus had quietened down again. Thank goodness!

Musings of a bionic mum-to-be

Recently my mother-in-law gave me an interesting newspaper clipping about the sorts of things new mums stress about when it comes to their babies. The top 10 list of worries included things like how to set up a routine for the baby, how to recognise the different types of crying, how to balance the time spent with grandparents, manage sickness, etc.

Being bionic, my personal worries are a little different to these, so I thought I’d share with you my own little list. ;-)