14 month old, terrible sleeper.. could it be ears?

[unheardof]

My ds is almost 14 months now. He was a great sleeper for about the first 5 months, gradually building up to 8-5, a feed and then back down til 7. But around 4.5-5 months, things just seemed to change, he started waking more, and we have now had about nine months of terribly broken nights, almost constant sucking at night and co sleeping.
A few details.. He was exclusively breastfed and 100% refused all bottles (even for whole days in nursery as I work pt) and pacifiers. He will nap during the day, but only after rocking in the buggy or being fed to sleep. He has an absolute terror of the cot (maybe due to an unsuccessful 5 nights of cc about 5 months ago?). Also, when I say co sleeping, I mean that I hold him all night with myself propped on pillows, and him angled up, he won't lie flat. I have tried propping him on pillows and angling up the cot, but neither worked.
I am wondering if maybe it could be an ear problem? He has very waxy ears, with quite a lot of new yellowy brown wax each day. He hates lying horizontally (hence either the buggy or me holding him), and breastfeeds very often still.. He would probably feed for about 30 minutes, 6 times a day or more if I would 'let' him, as well as all the comfort sucking at night.
He has never been diagnosed with an ear infection, does not run temperatures except with colds or bugs, or pull at his ears, but a friend lately told me about an acquaintance whose baby had ear issues and similarly wanted to suck constantly, hated lying flat, and had lots of wax. They could not remember what the specific diagnosis was though.
Any similar stories out there? Was it ears? Or 'just' teething/habit? Or something else? At my wit's end with such broken sleep, and worried he is in pain without me helping properly
Thanks for reading!

Yep. Can recognise almost everything in your story. DS was a great sleeper until he was about 6 months then suddenly fought it. He used to fight against being laid down, kicking and thrashing. I thought I was a terrible mother who couldn't console their baby . I tried everything and he would cry in his cot for up to three hours at a time. He did have reflux at the time so I thought it was that and in desperation took him to a cranial osteopath for the reflux (and I'm not at all woo but desperate times call for desperate measures...) She examined him and said very firmly that he was in pain in his head - and could it be his ears? This was the first ever mention of it and I'd never thought of it - he'd had no fevers or ear pulling or anything like that. I didn't really do anything about it but two days later his ear drum burst.

A couple of weeks later we went on holiday and I remember that holiday as being the first period of time when he ever slept through and finally I realised that she'd been right - the dr had prescribed antibiotics for the ear infection and finally he could sleep.

DS went on to have an entire 18 months of completely chronic ear infections and ended up spending literally every day for 12 months on antibiotics as, in the end, it proved to be the only way to keep it at bay. I could tell when an ear infection was coming back as his sleep would fall apart again. Finally at 2 he got grommets and has been clear as a bell ever since - no infections, no pain, absolutely fine.

So, very long story short, yes it sounds very familiar. But I've seen literally tens of GPs over his life, for ear infections and have been told frequently his ears were clear, only for the eardrum to burst later that week. So if you get pushback, ask for a paediatrician. Ours turned our lives around. Good luck!

Thanks so much for replying. That is really interesting that your ds had such a similar story. I think it's time to kick up a bit of a fuss and get to see someone who can check his ears properly. I keep getting fobbed off with 'he just has you wrapped around his little finger, you'll have to leave him to cry', but my gut tells me it's something more (especially as trying cc a bit got us absolutely nowhere).
Thanks again!

I don't like the sound of "he's got you wrapped round his finger"...he obviously had become good at sleeping, self-settling, all that stuff, and then something set him back. And yes I think that if cc didn't work, then there's something else going on. I tried cc with DS too - and he ended up screaming for literally hours. Now I realise he was just in pain . I wouldn't hesitate to use cc again if my DS got into bad sleep habits because it can help with bad habits but you need to be sure something else isn't going on first and it does sound remarkably similar to our situation.

This doesn't help everyone but while we were still finding our feet with the ear infections thing (in the end I became a pro...) this was helpful:

www.amazon.com/EarCheck-1124-Earcheck-Middle-Monitor/dp/B003VDEKAE

It's a monitor you can use to check if there's fluid in the ear. It's not fool proof but it would give me a bit of a sign of whether DS being unsettled was the onset of ear infection or just teething or whatever. If it flashes green then it's fine but red, or even orange, meant trouble's brewing!

Also if he does have chronic ear infections then my experience is they basically don't go away. "Normal" children get an ear infection, it gets treated, it goes away. They might get another one four months later but in between times are fine. My son basically had a low level infection all the time and that's why we ended up on prophylactic antibiotics permanently for a year. Obviously it's not advisable but until we could get grommets done this was the solution. So if you do find it's ear infection and it becomes chronic, you will find that the standard 7 day dose of penicillin or whatever they use does not work and you need longer treatments. Augmentin is the only one that worked for us.

Clearly I can write an essay on this. Sorry

Thank you so much for taking the time to put all this down. I'm bringing him to the doctor tomorrow, and I feel much more confident than I would have, armed with a concrete example of there really being something wrong in similar circumstances. I'm going to push to be referred to an ENT consultant.
Yeah I still feel guilty over the failed cc attempt, and he has a total cot phobia now , won't even sit/stand in it :-(
Thank you again, I'll keep you posted. Great that your little boy is doing so well now!