Our 19 month old has a speech delay. I'm curious to hear about other families experiences with infant toddler hearing issues.

History: He failed newborn hearing screen and one at 1 month, had an ARB(?) test to check the nerve it was fine. "Partially failed" a hearing test at 9 months prior to getting tubes, for repeated ear infection. After tubes he seemed to be on track verbally, he had about 5 or so words at 12 months. He's now 19 months old and while he has probably said about 50 or so "words" he doesn't say any of them consistently and mostly communicates non-verbally. My husband and I have also noticed that he seems to pay very close attention to our non-verbal cues. We have an appointment to have his hearing assessed again next week. We had him evaluated at 15 months old and they said he was developmentally normal other than the speech and they chalked it up to not being around other children because of COVID. Anyways, just curious about other people's speech/hearing stories.