Ear Wax

So, I haven't really written about Lauren's little problem before. It's one of those things a parent feels a bit ashamed about but knows really it's not their fault. Lauren has always been a little behind in her speech. She is understandable 95% of the time to me, however lots of strangers and family members have trouble understanding some of her words. Most 4 year olds are a little clearer. For example when she says "school" it sounds more like "stool", "cookie" comes out like "tookie".

We weren't that worried about it until we met her teacher back in September and she picked up on it and suggested Lauren might want to take some speech therapy. At the time that hit us pretty hard. Our perfect little pumpkin wasn't perfect. At the time we were mostly concerned with getting her to just go to normal school and so we didn't start therapy up at that time.

In November we went to our family doctor when Lauren complained that her ear hurt. Our Doc. checked her ears and found a lot of wax build-up in one of them. It is deep down so I hadn't had a way of noticing it at all. Children's ears are very delicate so she told us she couldn't dig it out or suction like she would an adult. So we started putting drops of mineral oil in at night. That softened the wax up and made her hair pretty greasy when it came out. No wax came out though.

We started around the same time to enrol Lauren in some speech therapy. The program she will go to has a waiting list and she will likely see them in the summer (CRAZY CRAZY STUFF>>>not even going to get into how nuts that is). The school board has a lady who works with kids and she has met with Lauren once so far. She says a lot of it may be just developmental.... Lauren was late starting to talk as a baby so she may just need to catch up. Some of it is an issue tough and needs work.

To get into this program we need to have a hearing test done on Lauren. At the time she was born they didn't do them on newborns. We went today for that appointment. Well surprise surprise.... there was too much earwax in her one ear for them to do the test. It would have been pointless to do it.... would have made it seem like she's deaf because of all the wax in there and possibly fluid. I had called them to ask about this but she receptionist told me he might be able to dig it out or something. The wax is too soft so it was too tricky to get it out. He wasn't an ear doctor, just a tester I guess...

So.... now we're back to going to see our family doctor this afternoon for the 3rd or 4th time and see what she says now. This wax is really making me crazy and helpless feeling. My girl is having trouble hearing and I know why but noone will fix it!!!!!
The ear man this morning told me that he could hear Lauren's speech and predicts it's a fluid and wax build-up causing her speech issues.

Our girl is still perfect to us but has a problem. I just hope that someone will help us out. I've looked online and most say the same thing, mineral oil or something similar is supposed to get it out. I tell ya, the day that a bunch of wax comes flowing out of my girl's ears I will be sooooo happy. Not really the thing you expect to make your day but that's the one thing I want more than anything today.

******************************UPDATE*********************************
We just got in from the doctor's office. I wanted to hug our doctor when she said she would swish the wax out with water. She had a great big metal syringe type thing (1 litre approx) that she filled with water and then put the water into Lauren's ear..... it took 2 syringes full of water but this big chunk came out. Lauren was so good through it all, I think she grasped the fact that this was a really good thing to get done and that it would help her. I was so happy, I almost started to cry. I would have never thought a hunk of ear-wax would ever make me this emotional.... when it's my baby I guess it just effects me in a different way. Now we'll be able to go back to the ear testing clinic and get down to business.