Hearing. Check.

Hearing test? Quiet down, I’m trying to sleep.

This morning I dropped off Mouse at preschool, left Chipmunk with a good friend (thank you!!), and took LP to the audiologist. Unfortunately I tried to get all of this dropping off done in 30 minutes. Fail. I missed my original appointment and had to go back 40 minutes later. Silver lining: bought totally unnecessary pastries while I waited.

While I was waiting, there was a woman with her own little baby. She asked me LP’s age and I hesitated.

I find myself always rounding down his age, worried that someone is going to take a look at him and wonder why he looks and acts like a younger baby. Realistically, I don’t think many people notice or even, especially at such a young age. But of course, I do. Shouldn’t, but I do. This time though, I just told the other mom that LP is almost three months old. Turns out her baby is two weeks older than LP, and was even more “newbornish” than LP. Itty bitty angel face, weighed 7 pounds, tops.  Then I realized, that mom didn’t care.  Or maybe she did.  But she wasn’t acting like she cared.  There I was feeling anxious because I just assumed she had this much younger baby and would wonder why mine acted the way he did, and no one cared but me.  I got called and never heard why that baby was getting her hearing checked, I wish I could have thanked that mom. Seeing her beautiful little baby got me one step closer to freeing myself from the nonsense of caring whether LP looks/acts his age or not, and whether he is “delayed” or not, and whether that even matters. It is definitely a work in progress, but it was a step. Hope I can do that for someone else one day.

Anyways. The test. They made LP hoppin’ mad by putting these funny adhesive earphones in his ears, and a sensor on his forehead.  Then I bounced him around to keep him asleep, while they played some mysterious clicking noises in each ear to test how his brain waves responded.  I whispered with the technician about how it is possible to give birth at home without drugs (she was not sold on the idea), as I got to watch two progress bars move on the computer, until both of then had the word “PASS” underneath, one for each ear.  That wasn’t nerve-wracking at all.  Then they made the little man mad again by peeling off all the adhesive sensors of his head while he was asleep.  His anger lasted all of 30 seconds, though, and then he was back to sleeping.

So LP can hear.  We will have to get his hearing checked regularly in the future, but it is nice to know (for now) this box is checked.

(Totally unrelated aside: A few of you seem curious about how we discovered Down Syndrome stowing away in our lives at all.  I’ll write about that too, coming soon.)