Tubes

Kate is a champion teether. She works on growing each tooth for a good two months! We don't have any of those "go to sleep and wake up with three new teeth in the mouth" experiences here. Oh NO! Our little Kate wants to make sure they are perfect so she spends lots of time and energy and emotion on each tooth! 

Unfortunately, we don't just deal with normal teething woes with our little angel. She seems to have this interesting correlation between growing teeth and getting ear infections. Not just sometimes, every time there is a new tooth coming, an ear infection follows. Dr says it is probably due to her size and not a whole lot of room for swelling in her head. However, the best part about it is that she doesn't seem to run a fever with her ear infections (hopefully you sensed the sarcasm there, no alarm system). With no fever I thought I was just being reasonable and not an over-reacting first time mom by attributing the EXTREME fussiness to the obvious signs of teething. After a three weeks of this EXTREME fussiness at the beginning of the Summer, Marshall stepped in.  "Maybe you should take her to the doctor just in case". I think he was more frustrated with my whining than hers. Again, I thought it was all due to teething and that the doctor was going to treat me like an over-reactive first-time mom, but I finally agreed to take her in. 

Long story a little bit shorter, I am waiting for my "Mother of the Year" award (again, sarcasm).  Double ear infections for who knows how long and who knows how many she had had before that I justified away! Five oral antibiotics, one round of shots, and two SUMMER months of ear infections later, our pediatrician decided that Winter wouldn't be fun for us or Kate if this continued and that we should try tubes. 

All I remember from my personal experience with tubes is bubble gum flavored anesthesia and anxiously waiting for them to fall out so I could see them and inspect them. Anyway, I decided that if I made it through twenty-something years ago she would too and Marshall agreed. 

Sept 9th, less than a week after we moved we took her in.

It took a little over an hour for our entire trip and I think less than 15 min for the actual surgery! She had a little bit of a rough time coming out of the anesthesia but other than that, It was a breeze! 

She recovered so nicely we forgot to make her follow-up appointment right away! 

We have been enjoying a MUCH happier child!