Repeated ear infections

[PANCHEY]

DD2 14 months has had repeated ear infections since she was born. First we just thought she was being a newborn and not settling to sleep at night. We have just gone through another countless sleepless night of not being able to settle her as she is in pain.

Since July 6th when she went to ENT and was prescribed antihistimine, she went on to have a month long infection; followed a couple of weeks later but another one, and now this one.

My elder daughter also has ear issues but with nothing like this reaction. She just seems to be in so much pain. I am really concerned about the potential impact on her hearing. She is likely to get grommets, but I am no-where near as convinced that they will help as much as they did with DD1. Anyone got any experience?

oh dear guess I posted at a quiet time. Problem is I am about to get busy. I will check back this evening. Grommets have been mentioned.

ds got repeated ear infections as a baby. There didn't seem to be much pain, but he would get super high fevers 104-105 and go all limp and floppy and paracetamol didn't work, just high doses of ibuprofen. I am american and was expecting to move back to the usa at some point and vaccinations are mandatory here for school, so was keeping up with the american requirements. So ds was given the pneumoccocal meningitis vaccination in the us (wasn't even available in the uk when he got the first dose). (As a side effect to the jab, it was known to reduce ear infection incidence).After the 2nd shot he got ear infections much less often (went from 6 or 7 a year to 1 or 2). The only downside was that they did become more painful and he often got a perforated eardrum as he got older. The good news is that ds' hearing has not been impaired in the least by all the ear infections. He is now 9 and few years ago moved on from ear infections to bronchitis and sinus infections, but most of the time is a happy healthy child.

Thank goodness for that. She is due her pneumoccocal meningitis jab this Thursday. Please let this help her. I think I said in my OP that DD1 just did not get the same amount of pain as she seems to be getting. She just screams and screams. Its great in a terraced house like ours, everyone on either side of us hears it too. Makes for a great relationship with the neighbours.

So your DS did not have grommets then? My DD as I said has had countless ear infections. We have been treating with paracetamol plus neurofen in rotation. Her ear drum perforates regularly.

No, ds did not have grommets. I guess that because he didn't have pain when he was little and then didn't have them often enough when he was older (here in us they require more than 2 a year to recommend grommets). The doctor did ok giving a higher dose of ibuprofen that what is listed on the bottle to help with the fever when he was little and pain when he was older. In both cases the standard dose (listed on bottle) was not enough.
I hope the pneumoccocal helps...we did have to wait for the booster (only a few months later) before we saw an effect.

Ear infection are horrid, horrid painful things

I don't have anything more to add, apart from to make sure that you check that there are no signs of mastoiditis. It is very rare so can be missed, but it's nasty and very painful. DS1 developed this after repeated ear infections. It is when the infection passes into the honeycomb-like mastoid bone behind the ear. Symptoms would be redness and pain behind the ear, displacement of the ear itself (DS was very noticeable!) and sometimes swelling of the ear. High temperature and generally appearing 'unwell' (can become very unwell if left undiagnosed but don't want to scaremonger).

Many are quite ill by the time this is diagnosed, but in the case of DS1 he was fully functioning but with extreme pain and temp spikes.

NothingButTheTeuch I had not heard of this. I shall mention this when we go for her appointment. I think perhaps I know this as just an infection of the bones of the middle ear (would this be the same thing?) I want to as the ENT specialist but not necessarily come out with all the correct terminology (IYSWIM)

She does get extreme pain and temperature spikes so maybe this is what this is? She also gets quite a few outer ear infections as well as middle ear ones.