Confused...

I find myself more and more confused as this journey continues. Jonathan told me the other day about a program that our doctor showed him. It takes a sound- say, a barking dog or a bus, and adjusts it to the level at which they say Zoe can hear. He said he could not hear the barking dog at all when she adjusted it, and could barely hear the bus. Why, then- does zoe startle when I yell her name from across the room? She must hear something, right? Of course, I don't want to slip back into the denial phase, but I am simply confused. I am not denying that Zoe has a hearing problem- it is obvious when i call her name that she usually does not turn around. I just don't understand why sometimes she appears to have heard something, and sometimes she doesn't.

This week Zoe will be getting her hearing aids, and we are all very anxious and excited to see what happens. I know my child, so I know that Zoe is going to be a little irritated and want to pull them out every 10 seconds- but we have to make her keep them in. The doctor said the most important thing we can do is to make her understand that we are the boss, and that she never takes them out by herself- that an adult must always help her. I keep thinking about all the responsibility that is going to come with this- I hope I can handle it! I am struggling with accepting that this is happening still. I have no idea what is taking so long to move on, but I am stuck just outside acceptance. I am in a place where I know that this is happening, I understand what is going on, but I don't want to believe it.

I love my baby- and I don't think I treat her any differently since we found this out, but I do find myself becoming immediately sad as soon as someone mentions it. Whenever Jonathan starts telling someone about her getting the aids, (because I usually will not start that conversation) I feel my mood immediately change, and sometimes I just leave the room. It doesn't help much that whenever that conversation does happen, the first thing people say is "awww... poor baby!" or "I'm sorry". Like she's dying or something. We went to a cookout on saturday, and of course I walked right into Jonathan having a conversation with friends about it.

One of the girls was a kindergarten teacher, and she was the sweetest girl I think I have ever met. She played with Zoe, talked to her... Zoe loved her. The only thing was, I am still very sensitive about this, and since they were already talking about it, we ended up in a long conversation about it. I almost felt obligated to talk about it, even though it hurts. I just want to push this away and never speak of it again, but I know I can't. It's here, and it's real, and it is not going away.