Logan is at the age where he likes to pull his hearing aids out of his ears to chew on them. In recent weeks, he has become quite proficient at this, as well as stealthy. We had several adventures at home looking for his hearing aids on the floor, but it becomes quite another matter when this starts happening outside of our home.
In the last week, we've had two incidents when we thought one of his aids was lost. Last week, Andrew took the kids out to Target while I spent some time with my mom. I get a call from him saying that he got home from the store and he can't find Logan's right hearing aid. So my mom and I rush to meet them at Target, where we search every aisle they went through and look through every shopping cart we can find. After a while, Andrew took the kids home and my mom and I kept the search up. We finally gave up and decided to check the carts outside again on the way to our cars. Incredibly, we found it at the bottom of a cart at the edge of the parking lot.
When I relayed this story to our audiologist, she suggested we use ear gear on his aids to keep them nearby. This is basically a sock that goes over each hearing aid that is tethered to the child's shirt. I happily gave this a try for a few days, but I noticed that Logan took his hearing aids out even more, since it makes them bulkier. After a few days, we stopped using it.
We are back to using the ear gear after losing one again today, but this time at Lowe's. I remember seeing the hearing aid on him when we were in the store, but when we got home only the earpiece was in and not the receiver. AHH! Not Again! We frantically search the truck, his clothes and his seat and then jump back into the truck to rush back to Lowe's. We must have someone watching over us because we found it near the cart return. It has some scuffs on it, like it was run over by a shopping cart, but it still works!
Needless to say, we will be using the ear gear daily and doing regular hearing aid checks throughout the day to make sure he still has them.
Hi--I found your blog through Hunter's blog. My 5 yr old has bilateral CI's (implanted at 12 months). Don't know if this will help but we used the otoclips, not eargear, to attach my son's CI's and his hearing aids when he used those. They just have a little loop that we attached to the tube on his earmolds and then it clipped to his clothes--that way it didn't make the aid any bigger. We just order them online from Westone when we need them. Good luck with everything with your little guy :)
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