I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this, and what we should expect next.
My 2yo tends to have a leaky ear right after a cold. Normally he will have his cold and be all snotty, and once that’s disappearing, he will have a couple of nights where he’ll be more active during sleep (maybe whimper 2-3 times in the night and sometimes wake up from it) and then a couple of days later, one ear will start leaking.And then a few days after that, his other ear will start.
Whar comes out of the ear is like clear snot, and isn’t too much. It doesn’t smell, and has a slight orangey-waxey tinge to it. It doesn’t bother him at all, and goes away with 2-3 days without medication.
This story has been ongoing since Feb 2022. At first we took him to the GP where they would look into his ear, announce that they couldn’t see because of the gunk, take a swab, and start us on some antibiotics for good measure. The swab would come back with no results, and the discharge would stop.
After a few rodeos with the GP, we went private to look into it more. The ENT did say that there were slight signs of infection in there (we went after an episode where it did cause him some pain) But no ruptured eardrum, and gave us some ABs that did the trick, as the second time we went it had all cleared up. The third time we went he had discharge but no pain, and she said that there was no infection, but at this age the Eustachian tubes are barely functional and that it was otitis media with effusion, where the snot essentially washes back up the tube into the ear because they are so horizontal. She said to just let it run its course and only entertain ABs if there were further symptoms of infection (temp, pain, etc.).
And so we now just let it happen and don’t take him to the GP or anything. He gets it about once every couple of months and they don’t seem to bother him. He hears everything and repeats everything. It’s hard to measure speech because he’s bilingual, but he’s like a sponge so I’m not concerned.
I suppose I’m looking for other people that have experienced this with their kids, as when I try to research, I just find stories about ear infections. To be clear, these are not ear infections (but can evolve into one if the discharge doesn’t fully come out - which doesn’t happen often). When did your kids grow out of this? ENT said it could go on until the Eustachian tube is mature at the age of 7!