Sarah Barnett: A letter to my CODA

To my baby boy,

As I write this you are 16 weeks old. You are absolutely perfect – beautiful green-blue eyes, fluffy brown hair. You’re smiling at everything you see, you’re rolling over and starting to teethe.

Amazingly you’re also sleeping through the night! You are, in short, a complete dream baby. But you’re something else too, though you don’t know it yet – you’re a CODA. You can hear, but Mummy can’t. 

They tested your hearing in hospital when you were just one day old. I sat on the blue plastic hospital chair with bated breath as they ran the tests, and because I’ve promised never to lie to you I’ll tell you the truth here – when they told me that you could hear I was relieved, because I was born hearing and I know from sometimes bitter and sometimes comical experience that you will have an easier time of it with working ears.

But part of me wondered, and still does. There are parts of being deaf that it would have been wonderful to share with you.

Perhaps you would also have loved the way we feel the world vibrating and humming around us, tuned into the feel of things in a way that hearing people don’t need to be.

Would you have understood the way that even when I speak in English my hands tingle with the possibility of my other language?

Maybe you would also revel in that final moment of the day when the hearing aids come out and I’m free to sink into my own private silence like it’s welcoming me home.

Selfishly, in some ways it would have been incredible to have had someone to share those things with. Instead I think of the things you’ll be sharing with your Daddy – listening to the radio, the sound of birdsong, even knowing the unique timbre of our voices.

This is ok too – I love you enough to share you. Maybe you’ll come and tell me all about the birds you can hear. Maybe in my head I’ll hear them too.

I took you for your vaccinations recently. To you this was something unpleasant and unsettling, something to scream over. To me it was a parenting milestone – the Meningitis B vaccine didn’t exist when I was a baby, and when I was 10 years older than you I went from being completely hearing to completely deaf overnight.

You cried as the needle went into your leg, but I smiled and kissed the top of your head because here was something I could protect you from. I’ve embraced my deafness and made it a part of me, but my journey hasn’t been an easy one. Is it wrong of me to want an easier path for you?

It’s important for you to understand something, my little CODA – Mummy isn’t broken. Sure, my ears don’t work, but everybody’s parents have different things they can or can’t do.

Maybe Billy’s Dad will never remember to send anything in for the school bake sale. Maybe Susie’s Mum won’t have time to read to her at night. None of us are perfect, but we all do what we can.

So yes, I know there will be times when I don’t hear you calling for me and you’re sad because all the other parents come when they’re called, when you get cross because you’ve repeated yourself six times and I still don’t know what you’re saying, when the other kids at school want to know what those weird things are your Mummy wears in her ears and you’re fed up of having to explain.

But on the other hand, you’re going to be the kid who welcomes everyone because you know what it’s like to be a little different. You’re going to be the kid who can express themselves with their hands as well as their words. You’re going to be the kid who knows that you don’t need all five senses to love something.

You are still so small, we have no idea who or what you’re going to be, but you’ll always be a CODA. I won’t always hear you calling me, but when I do I’ll always answer.

You may have to text me instead of calling to hear my voice, but I’ll always text back. You might even have to answer the waiter’s questions for me when I take you out for lunch and I can’t hear him over the background noise but it’s ok – lunch is still on me!

A lot of parenting is about the promises me make to our children, so here’s one just for you baby boy: I may not always hear you, but I will always be here for you.

Sarah Barnett is profoundly deaf after contracting Meningitis when she was 10. As her whole family is hearing she was introduced to deaf culture and taught sign language by the other deaf kids in the deaf unit at her secondary school, and now uses a mixture of sign language and spoken English. Born and raised in Birmingham she has travelled extensively and now settled back in Brum with her husband and son.