Ethan has conductive non-sensorineural unilateral hearing loss. His right ear has moderate to severe hearing loss, while his left ear has normal hearing. This hearing aid is attached to a headband that holds the hearing aid against his head. Using bone-conduction technology, the hearing aid transfers sound through his skull to his cochlear nerve.
Ethan was a little less than a year old when we first put his Baha on. He was pulling up on things but not yet walking. The Baha didn’t make any immediate noticeable change. Those wonderful videos when you put hearing aids on children, and they light up. That didn’t happen with Ethan, but that doesn't mean it didn't help him.
The Baha hearing aid is part of our lives and our care for Ethan. Putting it on him in the morning is like helping him put on socks, and helping Ethan off at night before bathtime is like taking off any article of clothing.
We’ve misplaced the Baha, but we’ve never completely lost it. It’s been left at school, as his teachers in the past sometimes forgot to put it back on after his nap. Sometimes it’s just around the house, and it gets put in a different place, and we can’t find it. The worst situation was when we went apple picking, and it got caught in branches. Through incredible luck, I found the right rows of trees amongst at least forty rows and heard the quiet feedback from the hearing aid directing me towards it hanging in an apple tree.
When Ethan got a new Baha about a year ago, the doctor suggested that we don’t need the safety line that attaches the Baha to his shirt since he was older. So we went one day without the safety line, and we lost the Baha, though we did find it soon after. And that’s why the safety line is still in use.
The Baha can’t get wet, so whenever there is rain, or our kids are playing in sprinklers during the summer, we’re very conscious of getting his Baha off his head and putting it away. Sometimes, Ethan is done with his Baha and needs a break. When he was younger, he would take it off and leave it around the house, but now he knows to tell us if he wants to take it off so we can put it away safely.
Most days, Ethan has his Baha on after changing out of his pajamas in the morning until he gets ready to sleep at night. It has been with him most of his waking hours for most of his life. This small device gives his right cochlear nerve more information and makes the world more full, vibrant, and meaningful. If Ethan had been born only a decade earlier, his experience with hearing loss would have been very different, and he would likely wouldn't have gotten a hearing aid so early in his life and not developed as well as he had.
Ethan is doing really well. He is smart, sharp, speaks really well, and has an excellent vocabulary. He’s funny, clever, silly, and sweet. And he's determined and loving. The Baha didn’t make him any of these things, but it helped ensure his disability did not get in the way of all that is wonderful about Ethan.
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