When Your Kid Needs Ear Tubes

This post is sponsored by Children’s Mercy. 

My daughter was my first kid in a traditional daycare setting. It felt like Lucy was always sick. Never anything serious, but always a constant runny nose. And from a young age, it felt like every single cold turned into an ear infection. Usually a double ear infection. Sometimes a burst eardrum.

My older two boys had never had reoccurring ear infections nor had my husband or I. I can’t even remember what the count was, but we were in the double digits for number of ear infections in her medical charts. We were always at the doctor, and my fridge always had a bottle of pink amoxicillin liquid. Just typing that, I can smell it.

Lucy never had obvious trouble hearing but it did feel like she wasn’t babbling as much as I had remembered her brothers talking at that age. Our pediatrician gave us the notice: “one more ear infection, and we’ll be talking about tubes.” It didn’t take long for that conversation to come right around her first birthday.

Ear Tube Surgery

We soon met with an ENT surgeon, Dr. Eyen, who checked her ears and confirmed she would be a good candidate. He explained the process, showed us the tiny tubes that would be placed in a hole in the eardrum and explained how they would eventually fall out as she grew.

When we finally got to surgery day when she was 16 months old, we checked in early at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. The hardest part was the wait and no food (since 1 a.m.). The nurses explained everything in detail, and it wasn’t long before it was time to hand her off to the surgery team for anesthesia. This was the first time I had a kid be “put under,” and even though it’s a routine procedure and I trusted our medical team, I was terrified.

We went to the parent waiting room where I cried the entire 10-15 minutes until we got the update that all went well, and she was in recovery. Yes, just 15 minutes! We met her in a recovery area where we got to love on her. Lucy, on the other hand, just wanted to go back to the toys that she got in the pre-surgery area.

Recovery

We went home with ear drops that were administered (something we were pros at by now), and she was back at daycare the next day. We had a follow up with the ENT doctor weeks later to confirm the ear was healing, and the tubes were in place.

Her tubes stayed in place well past her third birthday. Occasionally she would leak ear fluid, but that just meant the tubes were doing their job and draining the infection. We gave her the antibiotic drops, and everything would clear up quickly. It truly changed that season of our life to a much more enjoyable one for everyone.

Bonus: Her ears never popped on airplanes!

Speech Therapy

We did have to pursue early intervention for speech, and she is about to graduate from the school speech program as a first grader. Whether that was due to the early battle with ear infections or having two loud brothers who talked for her, we will never know.

Though it was scary to make the decision for ear tube surgery, there is no doubt it was the right one for our daughter. I am so thankful to the Children’s Mercy team who guided us through the process and reassured us every step of the way.