Back to where we started from....

I decided to pick a post from livejournal that was related to two topics: My older son's hearing loss and being a working mom.

November 15th, 2005
09:14 am - Officially November
It's starting to become gloomy and cold out here. After such an extended summer, I forgot to expect such weather. The good news is that I can wear my warm sweaters and drink hot cocoa. Two of my favorite things to do in the winter. :)

My weekend was nice. Pretty busy. Friday night, we had some people from temple over for Shabbat dinner. Saturday, we went to temple. Then we went to Lou Malnati's with a bunch of friends at night. The wait was so long, even though we had priority seating from putting in an order. The manager felt bad and gave us free appetizers and salad. And, as always, the pizza was worth the wait. Afterwards, we all hung out at our place and played Apples to Apples. Sunday, I got my hair cut in the morning. It's now chin length. Then we went to Gurnee Mills (a huge indoor outlet mall) with my mom and sister. We mainly looked at stuff for Eitan, but my husband got a shirt and belt for himself too. At night, we had dinner at my cousin's house. My 4 year-old cousin (who will be 5 next month) is so cute! She and I were playing hide-and-seek with her stuffed monkey. She also got to hold Eitan. She was sitting on the floor and we supported his head with a pillow, as well.

Eitan had his hearing test on Friday. Unfortunately, the results weren't what I hoped for. Thankfully, he is not deaf. However, he has a severe hearing loss in his right ear and a moderate loss in his left ear. He's getting fitted for hearing aids tomorrow. Since they caught it so early, he'll be able to adjust by the time he has to go to school. It's not the worst thing that could happen, but it's still not something we wanted him to deal with. We found out recently that there are some hearing problems on my husband's side. His cousin is completely deaf in one ear. She goes to rock concerts a lot, so they probably don't bother her as much.

In other news, I get to see "Rent" in 8 days. I can't wait. However, I have mixed emotions about time going by fast. There are things I'm looking forward to, but I know I have to go back to work in a few weeks and I'm not looking forward to that. I am more upset about having to separate from Eitan than he will be. It makes me sad that other people will get to cuddle with my baby all day while I'm doing stupid and boring stuff at my job. My working mom friends have told me that I'll enjoy the adult interaction. I just interact with my co-workers on a professional level. I'm not close with any of them. One of my coworkers has a son who is two weeks younger than Eitan, so he and I will be able to relate, but that's about it.

That's all for now. Sorry for the gloomy undertones of this entry. The weather isn't helping much.

Follow up: My older son has made a lot of progress with his hearing loss. More than we ever expected. He has great vocabulary and language skills and he's adapting well to his cochlear implant. He doesn't even ask for his hearing aid right now. I remember how we thought he'd never talk or would be extremely behind on language and he has blown our minds since that time.

Please don't take my comment from the original post to be anything disparaging about people who are deaf. I know people who are and they are very nice and they know how to adapt in order to communicate with the hearing world. At the time though, I knew that if my older son were completely deaf, I would be stuck because I don't know sign language that well and I still have a hard time trying to communicate that way. If he had been born deaf, I would have made sure he was implanted right away as to bring him into the speaking world. And I do know people who were born deaf and believe in and support cochlear implants. Even the people in "Sound and Fury" who were against CIs eventually got them, as well.

Side note: The night my cousin held him, she said "Get this off of me." It was really funny. She gets along so well with him now and he's crazy about her.

As for being a working mom, it definitely was hard when I was at a job I hated. Then I ended up being a stay-at-home-mom for a while between my contract naturally ending at that job and the length of time it took to get a job in NJ, which still allowed me to be home most of the time. The kids were in day care on and off, but I think it has made them more well rounded. It was helpful while I was job hunting, as well. Nowadays, I love my job and I know my kids are happy in their schools. It definitely makes all the difference in the world of a working mom. Sure, it's hard to coordinate schedules around appointments and other things that come up, but I'm thankful that my boss is understanding about stuff like that. I like the time I have to be an adult and I have fun comparing daily events with my kids.