Why regular eye and ear tests for young children are so important...

This week is all about children's eyes and ears, our experiences as a family and the importance of regular checkups with your doctor.

I do want to first start by saying I'm not a medical professional! Everything I share via Ask Charlie is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. If you think you may have a medical emergency, seek medical advice immediately!

So I'm going to talking first about Coco and her hearing.

I had just found out I was expecting Gus, Coco was pretty tiny and Arch was just two. We'd just got planning permission to completely rebuild this house. We were going to need to move out for a year and Simon and I were overseeing the project, I was going to be on-site every day. Sigh was travelling a lot for work and so we decided that we needed an extra pair of hands and we got the most wonderful nanny, Rachel.

One day she had taken the children out and when she came back she said to me, "Charlie, I think there might be a problem with Coco's hearing."

I was quite surprised that she had said that because when I worked as a nanny years before, one of the children that I looked after had a hearing problem that I picked up on. So I had felt that I was really in tune with that sort of thing. She told me that an aeroplane had flown over, Archie had noticed it and pointed it out to her. Coco hadn't heard it, and whilst they were looking up at the plane she was looking in the wrong direction. That was what had triggered Rachel to come and talk to me, and then things began to fall into place.

Coco's speech wasn't very good, she had a lisp and she struggled with her words so we made an appointment to go and see our doctor and he referred her for a hearing test. She had the hearing test, and it was then we discovered she only had 50% hearing and had really bad glue ear.

We were then referred on and it was advised that she had grommets. When she was born, she had a lot of bronchiolitis and really small, congested airways, so it did make sense that that would cause the glue ear.

She had the operation to have grommets put in and they removed her adenoids at the same time. The grommets are just a little tube that helps let the glue ear loosen and by easing that congestion, the eardrums can vibrate and you can start hearing sound properly.

Following the first op she had grommets put back in for a second time, and she had her tonsils removed because she was getting a lot of tonsillitis and she didn't sleep very well which again, was all linked to her airways.

She had to have speech therapy for some time to help. Children pick up and learn to speak by hearing and obviously if your hearing is impaired, then that does cause a problem with speech. We had a great speech therapist who worked with Coco and really, really helped. It was so great for her and we haven't looked back since!

I wanted to share this particular story because it's something for you to be aware of if you've got a child or a grandchild, or somebody you know that is maybe not hearing sounds or is struggling with their speech. Pop to your doctors if you have any worries.

I think also as a parent, you're so close to your child that you don't necessarily see the problems yourself. It does take somebody from outside such as a close family friend, or Rachel in our case, to pick up on it and say, "There possibly is a problem, it might be worth having this checked out."

Now for our experience with Gus' eyes.

Children should have their eyes checked when they're about six months old. And then from the age where they start school, they should start having their eyes checked on an annual basis at your local opticians.

Gus hadn't started school yet, but he had a bit of a nasty incident and was bitten by a dog. The dog's teeth went into his smile crease beside his mouth. I called 111 and was recommended to go to A&E to get antibiotics. By the time we'd got there, the wound had healed over, so they just prescribed antibiotics and sent us on our way.

I was administering them, but 24 hours later it was looking red and particularly aggressive. So we went back to the doctor and he said, "You need to go to the hospital. And I suggest you pack a bag as well. I'll call ahead and say that you are on your way down."

Unfortunately, it was badly infected. The tooth had gone all the way up inside the two layers of his cheek to the top of his cheekbone, and he needed to have an operation. When he came round from the operation, the swelling in his face was really bad, poor boy. His right eye was completely swollen for a couple of days and he couldn't see out of it at all. In total, he was in the hospital for a week.

Throughout his hospital stay, he kept saying, "Mummy, I'm blind. I can't see." and I would reply that it was due to his eye being really swollen. I reassured him that in a couple of days, the swelling would go down and he'd be able to see again.

This got me thinking, he's saying he's blind, but he's got his other eye, surely he can see out of that? What's going on? Once the swelling had gone down and it was healing well, I booked him in for an eye appointment. And it was during this appointment that we found he is very, very long-sighted in his left eye.

He's got an unusual left eye. His iris is two different colours, blue on one side and brown on the other side. It's long-sighted and a few other problems are going on as well, so he was referred to a specialist eye hospital, and saw a professor there. They worked brilliantly with him, and told me there are steps you can take to improve children's eyesight whilst they're young, which is why I wanted to share this!

This can be done by patching, using glasses and generally building up the strength in the eye or the eyes to get them working together before they are the age of nine. So regular eye appointments for a child whilst they are young are crucial.

Gus was not keen on the eye patches, but we had two brilliant charts and a reward system going on to encourage him to wear his patch.

He was forever losing his glasses. While all this was going on, I had my broken leg so I was relatively housebound. Simon took him for his first beautiful pair of glasses, but they were flimsy and broke within the first week.

I then spoke to a friend who had some far more robust glasses that were bendy and stretchable, the arms couldn't snap off so easily and they were miles better, though he did still manage to snap them! I have spent weeks of my life hunting for that little boy's glasses, so we even tried putting them on a string around his neck! He didn't need to wear them for running around, but he did need them for all schoolwork, reading, watching TV and things like that.

It is so important to get your children's eyes tested. Here in the UK, the NHS do it as standard and you don't need to pay for it. Every year, you can go and have an eye appointment and get them checked, and the sooner you catch these things, the better, they can do amazing things!

Gus' eyesight is now a lot better. He's still got quite a weakness in his left eye which he always will have, but now we can just go to the normal optician and not have to make it up to London to see the professor.

I hope that sharing these experiences with you is helpful and makes you a little more aware of these things. I hadn't picked up on Coco's speech, and I hadn't thought that there was a problem with her hearing. And I certainly didn't think that there was a problem with Gus' eyesight until he was telling me, poor boy!

Thank you so much for reading and I will see you again next week!

Love, Charlie x