When Sarah Ivermee became a mom to Freddie on 17th March 2011, he was just a tiny 3lbs 9oz. Freddie was born with Congenital CMV (cytomegalovirus), an infection that affects around one in every 200 babies, and it took him a year to fight it. By the time he had reached 3 months old, he was diagnosed as profoundly deaf in his right ear and moderately to severly deaf in his left ear and fitted with a hearing aid.
Freddie used his single hearing aid for the first three years of his life until he was fitted with a cochlear implant for his right ear. A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted neuroprosthetic device that significantly improves hearing in those who have severe hearing loss. Using a hearing aid for his left ear and cochlear implant for his right ear, his mom Sarah observed how brilliantly Freddie adjusted: “We have always been so lucky with Freddie when it comes to wearing his hearing aid and cochlear implant, they are rarely off.”
But while Freddie had no problem adapting to his new headgear, not all children were as lucky. “A friend of ours has a nine-year-old daughter who hates being different and having to have hearing aids,” Sarah wrote on her blog Limping Chicken. She discovered that lots of children who needed to wear hearing aids at school actually hated it, some even removing them so as not to stand out among friends.
When Sarah heard about her friend’s daughter, she thought there must be some simple solution she could come up with to make life easier for her. “I happened to have some flowery nail stickers lying around at home and gave them to her to decorate her aids and she loved them!”
After her initial success, Sarah some some more research and discovered lots of families out there that were having issues with their children, and very few options when it came to hearing devices. They were mostly plain, beige, boring, sometimes ugly and unappealing for children to wear.
So Sarah got a bit creative and started to experiment with the plain hearing aids by jazzing them up with stickers, gems, vinyls, charms and decorations of popular superheroes, Disney characters, and TV figures. Thus, the company ‘Lugs’ was created.
After six months of building the website, finding the best materials, and experimenting with graphic designs, Sarah founded her own company.
What started as a way to cheer up one nine-year-old girl has turned into an online success that helps families all over the world. Sarah’s company has really taken off and she loves hearing about the impact she is having on children dealing with deafness: “I am so pleased every time my inbow pings and I receive a thank you email accompanied with pictures of children wearing Lugs on their hearing devices and loving them.”
As well as hearing about success stories, Sarah loves getting new ideas for the lugs designs, which obviously her son Freddie gets first dibs on. The hearing aid designs have become so popular that even his brother and his friends at school want to wear them!
You can check out more about Sarah and Lugs at her blog and website.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
