Ear infection and hearing loss

[bigpigeon]

DS (almost 3years old) diagnosed with ear infection in both ears on Monday,one said to be "injected" but neither perforated. No antibiotics which was fine by me. Pain meds help and he seems to be improving, except he can't hear me talking to him. Fine if he is facing me and I am talking loudly and no background noise, but still am worried. He had glue ear from early baby days we think, up until about 6 months ago and before that he never made a sound except to scream in occasional frustration. He is now really switched on to talking and learning words at a rate of knotts. Is hearing loss normal in an ear infection or are we back to the bad old days of hearing tests and grommits?

I think hearing loss is normal because the inner ear will be inflamed and produce fluid in the process of fighting infection, the fluid in the ears will make it difficult to hear, hopefully it will clear when the infection goes - I hope he's on the mend soon x

DD1 had an infection when she was 4/5 and I'm afraid it took ages for the liquid to drain away and her hearing to return completely. She had about 40% hearing loss in one ear for at least 1 year. We dealt with it by talking to her teacher, who made sure that she was at the front of the class and tried to talk to her on her 'good' side. Obviously you don't have the school problem, but it sounds like you're doing the right things by getting him to face you and reduce background noise. The problem did go away and she has no long-term effects, although for some years she had problems producing the sounds 'sh' 'th' and 'ch', which we think was caused by the hearing loss to some extent - she had extensive speech therapy which taught her to make the sounds again. We don't live in the UK, though, so we had access to excellent medical treatment by ENT specialists.

All good advice thanks. He is in speech therapy already which is why I was gutted that he seemed to have blocked ears again as we were starting to go places. Maybe I am imagining it but I think it may be improving a bit since I posted. Fingers crossed it continues.