Advice for a 4 year old with painful ear wax build-up

[Justamumof2x]

Hi, my 4 year old has a bad case of ear wax build up.

we went to the doctors and they said his ear is completely blocked. She gave us antibiotics just in case there is an infection hiding behind it and suggested we use olive oil drops.

this was about 2 weeks ago, we’ve been using olive oil drops on and off because you can only use it max 5 days at a time so I stopped after 4 days because I saw a big chunk of ear wax come out onto my sons pillow in the morning so I thought that was that; but then 2 days later he said it hurts again.

I can’t see far enough into his ear to see how bad it is, but the drops aren’t doing anything else.

the pharmacist told me because of his age they don’t have anything else that they can give us and the doctors told us they can’t book him in for wax removal because of his age.

so I’m kind of stuck and don’t know what to do?

he’s fine in himself like just when getting changed he says to not touch his ear because it hurts.

any advice would be fab thank you.

Sorry to hear your son is in pain. When you use the drops do you plug the ear with cotton wool. I found this worked best (did it at night) as otherwise it used to just dribble out.

Is the course of antibiotics finished?

When my daughter had this she ended up needing a steroid as well, so you may want to go back to the GP if the antibiotics are finished and he is still in pain and you've done the best you can with the drops. At least some wax came out so perhaps you just have to persist with the drops as best you can.

lots of warm baths where he can lie so the warm water goes in his ears. The warm water really helps to soften it.

Get GP to refer to ENT consultant. They can remove the wax using microsuction.

My autistic DC had persistent problems with wax and after a couple of visits refused the microsuction. The consultant then removed loads of wax under general anaesthetic but obviously wasn’t keen on doing that too often and the problem kept coming back.

I now use a special spray syringe to wash out his ears which works well in his case. I don’t think it’s officially recommended though and I’d worry about a possible infection if your DS is in pain too (though it could just be discomfort from the wax) so I’d be getting that referral asap. Must be quite uncomfortable.

Just in case it’s helpful, this is the type of spray syringe I use…it works very well for us, but may not be what the doctor would recommend I think. (But in our case it was that or repeated surgeries, which doc was not okay with either 🤷‍♀️)