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@gingerbebe: has experience with this (down to hearing loss and speech delays in LO1).

My husband his entire life and even now in his late 30s gets lots of ear infections. They've told him he should get tubes but he is a wimp.
Every time he has an infection they say he has fluid as well. They call it "water behind the ears" or something. So while I'm sure that water doesn't always mean infection, there's definitely some correlation there.
Let us know what the ENT says.

Our pediatrician would tell me specifically whether it was just fluid or an actual infection. There were times she said there was fluid and a mild infection but recommended waiting a day or two to see if it got better before starting treatment. And times when she said it was definitely an infection. So basically I trusted her completely. I also knew she was not one to just give antibiotics if they weren't completely necessary. And we did go see an ENT about tubes but she grew out of it around that time. Lucky for us she didn't start getting her ear infections until she was about 2.5 and very verbal so any temporary hearing issues didn't affect her speech.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: My pediatrician can tell. Fluid just makes the eardrum bulge. An infection gets red and "angry looking."

Just to ease your mind, fluid build up behind the ear drum is not caused by water getting in the ears - the fluid that causes hearing trouble is BEHIND the ear drum and is from sinuses not draining properly.

Both my kids have had tubes put in, and it's really been a lifesaver. Short procedure, and totally solved the problem of recurrent ear infections.

@My Only Sunshine: Yes, I was going to say similar, my ped would always remark at how red the eardrum was.

And another thing, eventually, they do grow out of ear infections when the bend in the canal develops, but for some kids, I really do believe in tubes.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: kids can for sure have fluid in their ears without it being infected. I would be worried about hearing and speech development---having chronic fluid is like hearing when you're underwater. Many of the kids I work with (speech pathologist in early intervention) that have expressive speech delays have a history of chronic ear infections and/or fluid (prob 60-70% of my caseload).. Luckily tubes are really an easy fix & speech development tends to take off after. My daughter had tubes at 11 months and we noticed an immediate difference in behavior.

@My Only Sunshine: Yes was going to say this. Chronic Water/fluid behind the ears isn't from water getting in like in the bath or swimming. It's a buildup from within.
So if it's chronic there would probably still need to be some kind of intervention, not just a change in practices at home.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: My husband is like yours, it isn't that he doesn't trust the medical professionals, it's that he prefers not to intervene. We are currently locked in a debate over a very minor surgery for my son (not ear related), but it's a little exhausting, I won't lie.

Even if the issue is persistent fluid (and not recurrent ear infections), tubes can still be super helpful. We're on set number two. The first set was after recurrent ear infections, and the second set was after persistent fluid. I got the impression from the ENT that the color of the fluid helps them differentiate between the two (clear-ish fluid = no infection while yellow fluid + inflammation = infection). I'm so glad we ended up doing the second set even though the issue wasn't infections because afterwards the ENT said the fluid was as thick as Elmer's glue and never would have drained on its own. I have a co-worker with partial hearing loss in one of her ears because her parents didn't want to go the tubes route.

I'm not sure how old your LO is, but it was our day care teacher noticing that DS wasn't responding well to his name (also wasn't crawling or really babbling) that eventually led us to the ENT at 11 months. The pediatrician had noticed some fluid lingering in the ear after infections but didn't feel the ENT was necessary yet. Well the ENT took one look in his ears (they use a tool to measure pressure) and said that if he was hearing anything, it was definitely sounding like he was underwater. Plus the fluid was so thick it's likely his balance function was being affected (hence not crawling). We had tubes put in and it changed his life. We had a new kid by that afternoon and he was talking almost immediately and crawling 2 weeks after. It's honestly the best thing we've done for him.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Is the ped referring to the ENT? I think peds typically get this right. We had 4 back to back infections. And LO was in the peds office pretty much every two weeks for 3 months straight before we did our tubes. There was no fevers or noticeable irritability with her infections. She was teething at the same time so it was hard to decipher what was teeth versus ears in terms of her mood.

I specifically asked the ped at our 4th infection, when we would take a different action than antibiotics, and he said TODAY! Here's your referral, she needs help.

The ENT saw us weeks later, while LO was on antibiotics for an infection. Both ears were infected. The antibiotics weren't effective. They gave her antibiotic shots and scheduled us for surgery. We saw the ENT on a Thursday afternoon. We had surgery the next Tuesday am. At surgery her ears were still worse than 4 days prior. The ENT awarded her with worst ears of the day and declared that tubes were absolutely necessary.

I can't say that we saw the speech differences that others mention, but she was only 13 months old at surgery and has a vocal older sister that talks too much!

But I do know that we saw immediate improvement in her health. Her surgery was in December and we didn't have another "sick" visit to the ped until October when she had strep. She's been diagnosed with one infection since her surgery, that I'm not certain of. I think she really had strep and our urgent care didn't want to strep test her.

Her tubes have been in for 14 months now and while I really don't want to do the surgery again, if we find that we need to, we will. I won't hesitate. The procedure was so fast and is routine. The reward is significant and immediate.

And our ENT doesn't even recommend ear plugs for post surgery. She said they are only needed if our child is submersed, such as swimming underwater. She's now two, that's not really something that we need to worry about. We play in the water and dump it on her head without a second thought. External water will not get through the canal and behind the drum. It's sinus drainage that is the problem.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: they said he was completely under but it was literally less than 5 minutes. I was very concerned about the anesthesia but he did awesome. He was already awake when they brought us back to recovery (even though I specifically asked to be brought back before he was even done) and he was crying in a nurses arms while she tried to comfort him. They had a rocking chair set up for me and I nursed him right away and he calmed down quickly and easily. We had to stay in observation for about 2 hours where he ate and drank fine. Once he had a wet diaper, we left. He took a long nap and acted like nothing even happened. His ears drained for about 2 weeks (looked like snot) and he's been totally fine since. It's been a month and he hasn't had a single ear infection or cold, where before, he was CONSTANTLY sick. We also don't need to use ear plugs for bath time. They said only if he will be under more than 3ft of water. I'm so so glad we did it.

ETA DS did not get any medicine prior to make him drowsy, but they did give him Tylenol and an anti-nausea medication beforehand. He was not happy when they took him away, but we all survived

They are under but it's gas, not IV anesthesia and they come out of it quickly. With my daughter's first set, the ENT was still giving me a quick post op update when I could suddenly hear her crying in the recovery room so she woke up faster than it took him to tell me how the surgery went. With her second set and my son's set we were in a different hospital and the recovery area was farther away but with both of them but the time I got to them they were cuddled happily in a nurse's arms. With my son he had a red mark on his head and I kept questioning them about if someone bumped his head. Everyone said no. Finally got him out in the light it was lipstick marks from the nurses loving on him They really were so well taken care of at all 3 surgeries.

@MamaG: Interesting we didn't get the liquid medicine beforehand. My son and daughter both got their first sets at 11 months and were still pretty chill at that point so they went with the nurse willingly. When my daughter was 2.5 for her second set I was really nervous about how it would go when they tried to take her away. Luckily, she LOVES her ENT so the anesthesiologist just told her "If you come with me I'll take you to Dr. D" and she was all "yes please, game on"

A lot of this is duplicating others - but it always helps to read lots!

DD1 got tubs at 18 mos. She had had 6 or 7 ear infections...sometimes both ears, sometimes 1. In all cases she never showed signs until she'd spike a fever (102-ish) at which point we'd take her in and the ped would say they were "so bad". I begged for her to let me know sooner - I felt so bad they got so bad. The antibiotics would clear them - but the fluid would no leave. Which just meant the infection would ultimately come back.

The ENT said she likely had her hearing compromised 30-40% by the fluid. She recommended tubes. I was a nervous wreck for the surgery. They gave DD a pill before they came to get her so she would hopefully be "calmer" when they took her down. She cried a bit but not horrendously. We packed up our prep room and walked out to the waiting room - not exaggerating less than 10 mins after being out there the Dr came out and said it went well and as soon as she was awake they'd come get us. We got to the hospital at like 6:30am and were home by 9:30am.

She never had an ear infection after that. One tube fell out on its own. The other was dangling at a Ped appointment and her scraped it out with a clump of ear wax. Best decision ever.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: glad your lo did so well!