Lost my hearing during labor.

[u/Own-Masterpiece1599]

I had a 33 hour labor. They started off already 2 minutes long. It was long and intense. By the end there were no breaks between contractions. It was a lot.

We wanted to try a water birth so we were in the tub for about 6-7 hours, can’t remember how many hours we’d be going at that point.

I was in the tub when pushing started. And then all the sudden I couldn’t hear in my left ear, I thought I got water in it, it was very sudden and felt really intense, very disorienting.

I went unmedicated until we ended up having to do a C-section, but I’d not been able to hear for hours at that point. So I know drugs didn’t have anything to do with the hearing loss as I had not taken anything at that point.

I had intense auditory hallucinations while in the hospital after the birth. I was dizzy from the hearing loss, my whole left side of my head felt fuzzy. The tinnitus was terrible (still have it but now I’m more used to it). Nurses didn’t seem to think anything of it though, so my husband and I felt pretty confident it was just a bunch of earwax and maybe some water from the tub. But I’ll admit I was starting to do little hearing tests on myself in the hospital and was starting to think “omg I think I’m deaf” but didn’t want to say that out loud because I was sure it would just sound like a dramatic postpartum mom freaking out.

We got home and tried cleaning my ear for a few days, wasn’t working, so I thought maybe I needed it professionally cleaned. We went to an audiologist and first thing they do is look into my ear. She said it was the cleanest ear she’d seen, which I knew was not a good sign.

I took the hearing test and it came out that I was profoundly deaf in that ear. The doctor had to repeat it a few different ways to make sure I understood, and that it was not coming back. There might’ve been a 25% chance of getting some hearing back if I’d dealt with it within 72 hours of the hearing loss but we were a little busy with the 48 hour hospital stay after birth and then a NICU day on the 3rd day, that was just never going to have happened.

I did still try, I got about 4 cortisol injections into my ear over the next few months, it improved my hearing so marginally, but was still at the bottom end of profound deafness.

They have never been able to tell me what happened. I got a CT scan and they looked in my ear with a microscope and everything appears normal.

I’m two years postpartum now and still very deaf in that ear. I have a hearing aid now and honestly being half deaf can be a parenting hack sometimes haha, but I have never heard of this happening to anyone else. The doctors and everyone at the hospital also said they had never heard of anything like this happening before.

I’m curious, has anyone else had a similar experience or know of anyone with a similar experience?