Fitting in to another community

As I was trying to come up with a good post for tonight....my heart keeps tugging at hearing impairment topics, for two reasons.

1) When we found out that Aubrey had a  mild hearing loss, we felt sort of alone in our diagnosis.  We didn't know any other kids with hearing impairments or blogs to follow, like we did when we got her Down syndrome diagnosis.  We had no one to look up to for hearing loss. I hope that somewhere out there, we can help other families navigate these waters.

2) It is where we are in our life.  A lot of what we do revolves around the fact that she is hearing impaired.  Part of her day is putting her hearing aids on, making sure she STILL has them on (ie.  has not taken them off in a store and set them down on some random counter:), making sure we take them out before bath, making sure they sound right and the batteries are good and that we have back up batteries.  We take her to a special school and we go to sign language class and I translate things for others into sign language.  It's where we are at....

I think it is like that for everyone.  Your lives revolve around your family and whatever it is that they are doing.  Some weeks it is more about Aubrey and what is going on at her school and which appointment she needs to get to.....and some weeks it's about the big kids and the Living History Fair that they are participating in and whether or not Mom has made the costume for that!

When Aubrey was born and we got the confirmation that she had Down syndrome, we became part of a pretty special community.  I am so proud to be a part of the Down syndrome community.  I'm proud of my daughter.  And when we got her hearing impairment diagnosis, we joined another community.  And I'm also proud to be a part of the Deaf Community as well.

This life with Aubrey sure has been a roller coaster and NOTHING like we ever thought it would be....it's better and we are so blessed to have her and to have been able to open our lives up to so many new and wonderful things because of her.