16 month old constantly having ear infections

[Lovelongweekends]

Since the start of February, dd3 (16 months) has had three ear infections and it looks like she starting a fourth. She’s had antibiotics every time which clears it up and always completed the course. Her ear has been checked when her last infection cleared up (last Friday) and there was no sign of a hole in her eardrum. I’m taking her back to the doctors again tomorrow and will probably get an ENT referral but was just wondering if anyone had experienced anything similar and knew what was going on.

We've had exactly the same with our son. He had 11 infections in almost as many months. It usually co-incided with him teething and on two occasions, he ended up being admitted to hospital it was so bad. He's now nearly 2 and is struggling to talk (can only say 4 or 5 words) so our doctor referred him to audiology and ENT. We've since discovered he has hearing loss, glue ear and will need grommets fitted ASAP. I'd push for a referral as paediatric ENT tends to have quite a long wait. We found that Ibuprofen helped lots more than Calpol and that titling his bed helped too (it hurts most when they are lying flat).

Yes we had this - also glue ear and grommets needed.

If you can go private for hearing test I would as wait can be long on nhs

Thanks rufus . Our GP has said they will refer her if she gets another infection which it looks like she has. It’s so awful for them, the poor little things. She hasn’t started talking at all yet so I am concerned about glue ear etc.

Thanks onceupon, will definitely look at getting a private hearing test.

My doctors are awful.
My 3.5 year old has had at least 12 ear infections in her life, generally every 12 weeks.
She has temporary glue ear every single time and struggles to hear for weeks on end.
Doctors refuse to refer her for a hearing test as she’ll fail because her ears are full of wax, they’ve prescribed olive oil at least 5 times which has done nothing.
They won’t refer for gromits as overall her speech is good, despite having hardly any hearing for about 10-12 weeks a year.
We have private cover but they refuse to refer for that as it’s not true glue ear, just temporary every 12 weeks.
Hope you get on better than we have.

Oh and they rarely give antibiotics as each time we’ve known she’s had an infection the ear drum has already perforated so they say antibiotics won’t help.