So, I know most of you fellow moms out there have already dealt with your share of ear infections. In fact, my friend Becky's son Hayden just had tubes put in today, poor guy! I just read the other day that 75% of babies get an ear infection by the age of three. I thought, "Wow, Katelynn hasn't had to deal with that yet." Then boom, murphy's law for thinking that - she has a double ear infection!
She was up screaming for three hours in the middle of the night on Thursday. She has always been such a good sleeper that I was a little panicky when I couldn't get her settled back down. Since she never had fever, the ear infection didn't occur to me for awhile. I was very close to taking her to the ER when she finally settled down and conked out till morning. There was a discussion with the on-call nurse somewhere around 4 am.
I started wondering - why the heck do little kids get these all the time and adults rarely do? I read up on this thrilling topic and learned the interesting information below. (Side note - The things I learn about now are so different than they used to be! They all seem to revolve around a 20 something pound little goober.)
- Babies are born with round heads to get through the birth canal. As a result, the Eustachian tubes (connection between the ears and the back of the nose) like horizontally in kids until three years of age.
- This keeps the tubes from draining effetively. As a child grows, his head and face elongate. The Eustachian tubes ultimately slant downwards and work better.
- When a child gets a cold, the virus causes the lining of the Eustachian tubes to swell, making the tubes even more inefficient. Bacteria like to grow if the fluid sits there long enough. The body's immune response to the bacteria creates pus, and that is the definition of a middle ear infection.
So there you go. Ear Infection 101 in a nutshell.
No comments:
Post a Comment