Ear Tubes Surgery

When your little one’s sick, you want nothing but to make them better. Cause when baby’s sick, honey, no one’s sleeping in your house. When my little one left the “safe” bubble of home and in to the wild wild west of daycare, we saw the sniffles almost immediately.

Many people say that with firstborns, parents tend to ‘overreact’ and call the doctor over every little thing. There is nothing wrong with that, and the nurses encourage you to call if you are uncertain. I called so many times that I know the number to Dean’s Nurse on call by heart, know which Dean clinic is open the latest, which accept pediatric patients on the weekends, and the hours and locations of urgent care. I swore the nurses rolled their eyes every time they pulled up my son’s chart and saw how many times we called. They never did, but I know I rolled my eyes with how many times I had to call them over fevers, hives, vomit, you name it.

The sniffles continued and turned in to double ear infections. Throughout the next 7 months of my son’s life, we would be blessed with 6 more double ear infections (yes, 7 ear infections in 7 months), teething, croup, and hand-foot-mouth disease. He was constantly sick. Recently, after my son got back-to-back ear infections, we were referred to the Ear, Nose, and Throat department. After a simple hearing test and a peek at his history, the ENT doctor said it was time for tubes. He had no hesitation and my son had already started showing signs of hearing loss from all the infections.

As a parent, hearing this was immensely hard to swallow. My son had just turned a year old and we were already being faced with needing surgery?! I felt scared, upset, anxious, sad, and uncertain. I kept trying to convince myself that if we waited just a little bit longer, we could avoid surgery and he’d be fine. But the facts were glaring us in the face. Now 13 months old, he’s only slept through the night a handful of nights since being born. He had been on antibiotics a lot in his short year-ish of life. He already was suffering from a bit of hearing loss. How could I not do the surgery? With more deep breaths and self-reassurance than I could count, I made the appointment.

Our surgery occurred at St. Marys, the place my son was born a little more than a year ago. We had to be there at 6:30 a.m. which was nice because he was one of the first patients of the day. Arriving in the small pre-op room, we were surprised with a little stuffed turtle waiting for him on the crib bed and a fun space-themed baby gown for him to wear. (Turns out Momma needed that turtle more than he did!) We had a very nice nurse who checked on us and kept us in the loop with events. Unfortunately, there was a morning meeting for the staff and then the anesthesiologist was running behind so he didn’t get taken back to the operating room until close to 9 a.m. I decided to go back with him until he was put under. An immensely hard task.

As promised, the operation was quick. I think we waited all of 15 minutes. We were debriefed; apparently he had a LOT of ear wax buildup and had fluid in his ears again. The tubes went in just fine. We were able to go back to him as he was just starting to wake up.

If you take anything from my story, please, take this to heart: your baby waking up from anesthesia is ridiculously hard on the heartstrings. The nurses cautioned us that when he was coming to, he would be “grumpy”. I don’t think they knew what grumpy meant. I was given this super limp, eyes clenched shut, screaming little boy. It was a hard, low scream. Certainly a tone I’m not used to hearing from him. He was helpless and my entire being wanted to do something to comfort him. Seeing this is when the guilt kicked in full force. But a sudden “Mommy Zen” took over. I found some hidden strength to be calm, soothing, and able to rock and shh and sing to him. It was a long half-hour but we made it through. The gas finally wore off and my son came-to enough to drink his milk, eat some graham cracker, and fall back to sleep so we could go home.

He bounced back immediately. That day he was active but groggy. Thanks to help from my Mother-In-Law everything went really smoothly. You can barely tell he had surgery and I am already seeing improvements. He’s responding right away to verbal cues and is actually mocking sounds a little better and more often.

Overall, the procedure was harder on me than it was on my son. The anxiety, the doubt, the guilt… It was all for naught as he bounced back so well. If you’re on the fence with this procedure, do yourself a favor and do your research but know that truly, the procedure is quick and relatively painless (for the kiddo!). I do not regret the decision my husband and I made to have it done. Lots of parents face the same conundrum so if you have questions, reach out to your peers or feel free to contact me with questions and I will be happy to share more details with you.

Good luck Mommas, no matter what you’re doing a great job!