How long to give antibiotics?

[KitKat1985]

DD1 (aged 2) has a really bad infection and we ended up at out-of-hours docs on Sunday with gunk coming out of her left ear, high temp, generally unhappy etc. Dr said her infection was bad and had also spread quite a lot and caused general swelling along her ear / nose / throat area. She was prescribed amoxiciilin 3times a day, along with piriton twice a day to reduce the swelling and nose drops 4 times a day. We've been giving this alongside calpol several times a day for pain etc. She seemed a bit brighter yesterday so we sent her to nursery as normal today (which she normally loves) but they phoned just now to say she's really distressed again, and if she doesn't pick up after calpol asked if I would be willing to pick her (which obviously I said was fine). My question is how long do I give the antibiotics to work? She's now on her 4th day of amoxicillin so I was hoping she would be getting better by now.

Sorry that first line should read really bad ear infection.

I would expect it to start improving but it depends how bad the infection is, it does sound quite nasty. Are you giving nurofen as well as calpol as that is also an anti inflammatory as well as pain relief.

i find amoxicillin crap for my ear infections and take co - amoxiclav
my dosage is for 7 days , some people have 5 days worth.
ive been told if it doesnt get better after 7 days see gp ,if it gets worse see gp asap.

Thank you. Just spoke to nursery again and they said she's actually in more pain now than she was a couple of days ago which I'm not happy about so I've booked another GP appointment for 5pm today. I'm also going to get some infant neurofen to see if that helps her with the pain.

The neurofen should definitely help. I find it much better than calpol.
Hope she feels better soon.

Ibuprofen better for ear pain.

Hope that she is feeling better soon

Thanks. I saw GP yesterday evening and he thinks we need to finish the course of amoxicillin first but has given us some ear drops to give alongside her other medications, but wants to see her again on Monday as she has perforated her eardrum and if the infection doesn't clear up soon it could cause her some long-term problems.

Oh but the receptionist wouldn't give me an appointment for Monday as she had no pre-bookable appointments left. She's told me to come in person Monday morning and she'll do what she can for us.

I think the ibuprofen is helping with the pain though, so thanks for the advice on that.