Poor little ears

     As I mentioned in his two month post, Simon has been having problems with ear infections. Not only are they infections, they are bad enough that his ear drums rupture so the goop can escape. It is very rare for babies under 6 months of age to get ear infections at all. If they get an ear infection before then, it usually isn’t serious enough to perforate the ear drum. Not only are perforated ear drums temporarily extremely painful, they can lead to permanent damage to ear drums and loss of hearing if they happen too frequently in infants. Most doctors will strongly recommend a surgery to insert tubes into the baby’s ear canal if the baby has 4 infections within the first year, and this surgery is rarely done before 7 months or so. My sweet baby turns 3 months old in 4 days and has already had 3 perforated eardrums in the last 5 weeks. According to the doctor who came to examine him tonight in our home, Simon's is the most extreme and confusing case she has come across and we need to do all we can to get him into a pediatric specialist ASAP (which is harder to do than I imagined, they're trying to say our first appointment would be in January!).
     Luckily, his hearing seems to be totally intact. He communicates back and forth with us and responds to noises just as a newborn should. Despite having a really bad set of ear pipes, Simon is pretty much the happiest baby I could ask for. He is rarely fussy, he eats well, and is usually just content to hang out and be loved on. He does hate his car seat, it is true; but other than that he is a happy little camper who just sleeps ALL the time. I think it is his way of coping with the pain and meds. He has been sleeping for 10-12 hours straight at night and 8 hours of naps during the day for almost two months now. He just wakes up to eat, coo and play with us for a bit, then he goes right back to sleepyland. He is still 90th percentile for height and weight and is right on track with all of his milestones, so we just have to assume that he’s getting all he needs despite not having to eat as often as other babies his age.
     The following link is the detailed explanation of what’s been going on and more about our at home doctor visit today and what treatment will be needed in the future. It will probably be of interest to only a few of you, but I need to write it down for my records. It’s not way long, but as to not burden the blog and also to help save your eyes from reading it on my Halloween color pallet, I am posting it on a separate link.
     Thanks so much for your well wishes on facebook. My heart is really breaking for my poor little boy, I hope so badly that nothing permanent will result from this.