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Home › Articles › Fiction/Opinion/Essay/Humor › Two Moms Talk: One Can't Hear

Two Moms Talk: One Can't Hear

What New Parenthood is Like for the Hearing and the Deaf

By Lisa A. Goldstein and Jenn Director Knudsen

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Lisa A. Goldstein and Jenn Director Knudsen have a lot in common, with a key difference. The two women met in journalism graduate school, work from home as freelance journalists and are new moms. But Jenn is hearing while Lisa is deaf.

Lisa and Jenn live on opposite ends of the country and have daughters who are just five months apart in age. Both Jenn and Lisa correspond regularly via e-mail – Jenn shares experiences with Lisa about phases her daughter Alyssa is in, while Lisa learns what to expect as her daughter Samara approaches them.

As such, they continually learn from one another about the signals their daughters give them when they have a need or want. For example, the moms – like all moms, after much trial and error – have figured out when their toddlers need to eat, be changed or just get in some snuggle time. They also observe how their daughters are acquiring language.

Of course, Jenn and Lisa approach these and other topics quite differently, given Lisa's need to rely on much more than just sound to be a mommy. Here, Jenn and Lisa recount how they've each handled certain situations.

Freedom Issues: The Phone
Jenn: The phone rings and it's in the other room. Before Alyssa could walk (at 13 months), I'd just run into the other room and grab our cordless phone despite Alyssa's plaintive cries, meaning, "Mama, don't leave me all alone in this big, cavernous room!" Now that she's walking (er ... running), she'll just follow me into the other room – often with her own phone in tow – and have her own conversation while I have mine, that is, when she's not clamoring for my attention. These days, most anything that takes my attention away from her elicits an immediate response.

She'll shout, "Bye-bye!" from across the room, or she'll climb into my lap, slam a book onto her legs and say phrases like, "Book! Read!" to foil my attempt to concentrate on my (brief) chat with a friend or colleague. I once read that moms crave a refrigerator equipped with a small compartment designed solely for crawling into to complete a phone conversation. I'd like an appliance like that.

Often, I get business calls. Those I take in another room and try to get through hastily. Business calls are Alyssa's least favorite. How do I know? Because soon after I leave the room with the phone at my ear, she'll commence opening "her" drawers in the kitchen and throwing each and every object in them onto the tile floor. CRASH! BANG! SKID!

Lisa:

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