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It's AH-mazing! It made all the difference for us. And it was so easy.

Hugs mama

We had them put in when DS was 13 months old and it made a huge difference for him. He'd had constant fluid and ear infections for 4-5 months before and we also were at the point where we had to use the shots to fight them.

After the surgery, we realized how much his hearing had been effected by being full of fluid for so long, he started jabbering more / trying to say words within days of the surgery. The procedure was really quick, and he recovered super fast. The day of he was groggy / a little cranky but by the next day he was totally back to normal.

He's only had one ear infection in the past year and it was right after the tubes, but it was treated with the ear drops so went away quick.

Good luck!

Best decision we ever made. My daughter was 1 month shy of a year old when she got them. I was so worried going into it, but it has been great. Just a warning that when they come out of anesthesia they are inconsolable (which is really hard to witness). But then on the way home she fell asleep and continued to nap for a bit when home. Once she woke she was in good spirits immediately. She did get a few ear infections after, but they were easy to spot, didn't require a dr appointment, and didn't cause her pain. We got a Rx for ear drops to use if we ever spotted an infection.

We did tubes at 13 months and it's been wonderful. We are almost exactly one year out now as she got them right before Christmas last year. We had them done early morning, she was really irritable coming out of the anesthesia which was completely normal and we were prepared for. She calmed quickly after we got her in the car. She was sleepy that day, but that was the only thing notable. She ate fine. Her ears were so bad that we had to do antibiotic drops for three days post surgery to get them clear. We had one ear infection this fall that was diagnosed by our urgent care along with a sinus/upper respitory infection. We did a round of antibiotics and that was it.

Her colds don't seem to linger as long now either.

The procedure itself was incredibly fast. I honestly didn't get a chance to cry, it was done so quick. I have zero regrets about the surgery and we will do it again if needed. The ENT had warned us that she may need more than one set if these fall out and she starts having problems again.

Don't mean to threadjack, but what is the oldest age that you would do tubes? DS is 27 months and on week 3 (that we know of! coud have been longer) of an ear infection (2nd round of antibiotics). It's his first one ever, but I know it's affecting his hearing and speech.

@wrkbrk: @Mrs D makes a good point about if you have a choice of where to do the surgery - we also opted for the hospital instead of surgical center, because there are guidelines on when each place will allow a child that age to get anesthesia, and for us the surgical center had much more strict rules on it because they didn't have a full anesthesia staff like a hospital would.

So for example, if DS had a cold they wouldn't have let him get it done that day at the surgical center, whereas at the hospital they just listened to him for a while and then made the call. It's hard this time of year to expect them to be 100% healthy on any given day!

@lioneyes: my son is 28 months and we go see the specialist on Tuesday for tubes.

@wrkbrk: we saw our ent on Thursday and were in surgery the next Tuesday. We did our surgery at a surgical center affiliated with the children's hospital. I think it would have been harder to do the surgery so quickly at the children's hospital. Our ent recommended breathing treatments twice daily leading into surgery to keep her lungs open. We already had the nebulizer and albuterol on hand. So it was no big deal.

@wrkbrk: do it! We didn't have ours done until 21 months and DS had a speech delay because that language explosion window is like 18-ish months and he basically was hearing underwater from 16 months on. He should be all caught up by age 3 but it's been a lot of working with him on speaking and pronunciation and him being frustrated at not being understood. Also he used to be a howling mess every time he got a cold but since tubes he missed 1 day of school aside from HMF quarantining. Surgery was super easy. DH really didn't want to have it done and pushed our HMO for a pediatric anesthesiologist and now that we got it done he's like #1 fan and wants our baby to get them ASAP (he's had 2 in 6 weeks so it seems like it's running in the family).