tubes

Fever. Crankiness. No sleeping. All the signs that point towards an ear infection and one of the most common things for babies to get. My oldest had one ear infection as a baby, middle son had zero, but my youngest, man…he had so many.

I can’t even tell you how many times we were visiting the pediatrician because the ear infections were either not going away, or coming back a week or after antibiotics. Doctor tried different antibiotics each time just to see if one could eventually kick the infection, but unfortunately that never happened.

He was 18 months when we discussed getting tubes in AND adenoids out. Not only was he in pain so frequent, but we started to notice that his speech was not where it should be as an 18-month-old. No one could understand anything he said. My brother-in-law actually termed the jibberish as Jakenese, because it was a foreign language to everyone!

Having your 18-month-old go in for surgery was a bit scary. At this point he had already had a 2-day hospital stay at the age of 14 months, so I was not looking forward to him having anesthesia and being put under. 

My husband stayed with him and sent pictures as they were waiting. He let me know when he was in recovery as soon as he was in there. The procedure did not take long at all and they were home in no time. I was so ready to just snuggle my baby when he got home because I knew he was going to be loopy from the anesthesia, but no. He was wide awake and was going full force the rest of the day. You would have never known that just had surgery! Since JR had his adenoids out also, we had to make sure he got cold and soft food for a couple of days. Also, his breath was AWFUL while his throat healed!

waiting to go back!

We went back for a follow up and the doctor told us that he would need to wear ear plugs while in the bath and while swimming (we were leaving for the beach in a couple of weeks). Ear plugs? That small? Do they even make them? Oh, yes they do! I was shocked to see these cute, small blue ear plugs made just for babies! Luckily, he didn’t give us problems at all with wearing them, plus they made him look so cute!

Ear infections were gone and slowly JR’s speech was improving. Pediatrician told us that because he always seemed to have fluid built up, he was having a hard time hearing, hence the hard time with pronunciations of words. It was as if a light was turned on and he could finally hear better and we could finally understand him better.

The tubes did eventually fall out. The first one was 6 months later and the second was about a year later. Not surprising because he was so young when they were put in, so as he grew, so did his ears and ear canals. That pushed the tubes out.

Thankfully we have no had any ear infections since they have come out and he is now six. I’m glad we made the decision to get them done as early as we did because he was sick all the time and we just did not want that for him anymore. He bounced back super quick and didn’t even know what happened!

 

1 COMMENT

  1. My 4 year old has his adenoids out and tubes put in last year (almost a year ago). He had frequent ear infections and speech delays and behavior problems and wasn’t sleeping the greatest.

    Night and day after surgery. He’s almost back up to “normal” regarding his speech and he still doesn’t sleep the greatest, but the snoring is gone.

    His behavior is much better too.

    And of course, no more ear infections! Yay!

    I did feel TERRIBLE after the surgery and recovery because one day he ran up to me and said “Mama, Mama, my nose is broken… I can breathe out of it.” Poor kid.

    But he’s all good now.

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