This Month's Featured Family!
October 2003
Benjamin
Incomplete Cleft Lip
Indiana
hands to his face so I really didn't have to keep his arm braces on very much. He had a nose stint on that came out about three months later. His scars are still prominent, but it has only been about four months since surgery.
There are some people that don't even realize that he had a cleft lip. A stranger at a grocery store even asked recently "How did he scrape his lip?". When I had told her that he had cleft lip surgery, I had to show her proof that he really did have a cleft lip.
It is amazing the technology we have today that can
repair something so major and make it look like it
never even happened.
Kelly Freiberger
I gave birth to my son Benjamin on Halloween of 2002. I would say that I had a wonderful pregnancy except for the five months of morning sickness. I had three ultrasounds and one major ultrasound that checked for birth defects and any problems. I was about four months pregnant at the time of that ultrasound and according to the doctor everything was fine. Even the words "the lip looks normal..." came out of his mouth.
I was a week overdue before they had to induce.
I finally gave birth after 16 hours. When they put Ben on my chest my heart literally sunk into my
gut. He was born with a cleft lip with no palate
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damage. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head...."What did I do wrong?" was
one that constantly went through my head. There is no known cleft lip or palate that runs in either side of the family. Benjamin's cleft lip was very minor, but it was still heart-wrenching because every parent has thoughts of how perfect they want their
child to look. Ben was and still is a gorgeous baby. I didn't think he could get any cuter.
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Immediatly in the hospital they gave me a Haberman feeder. Ben became VERY colicky due to the amount of air his open lip allowed in with feedings. He also developed gastric reflux.
Ben had his surgery when he was three months old. That was the hardest thing I ever had to go through.
To have to hand your child over to a stranger to have a major surgery is the most gut-wrenching thing to have to go through.
Surgery went as well as planned, so well they decided to fix his crooked nose at the same time. He was still young enough that he hadnt discovered putting his
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This cleftAdvocate page was last updated March 25, 2014
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