Cleff Palites

My cousin was born with a cleft in her lip and pallate. You need to contact the Shriners group in your area. They have taken care of everything, the surgeries, transportation and lodging while she was there. And you cannot tell that she had one at all. You may get ahold of them. And early intervention is a good key for her speech and all. We live in the Tulsa Oklahoma area and our program is called Sooner Start, they were also great with things from sign language to lip placement and speech, I kept my cousin until she was 4 years old (from 7 months) and they even came to my house for therapies. If you have any questions you can pm me at ____@____.com
Best of luck to you

My oldest had a cleft pallet. It is really difficult until they fix it. All of my daughter's soft pallet was gone and a little bit of the hard pallet. First of all she could not suck, so I had to make bigger & bigger holes in the nipples. What I bought was nipples for premies & babies with limited sucking power and put more holes in them. Until I discovered what to do I almost starved her to death. When she went on solid food everything came out her nose. I would put a spoonful in & it would come back out her nose. I used an infofeeder and we would push on the plunger, which put the food past her pallet a little. After she finished eating she would sneeze a couple of times to get the food out of her nose. They fixed the pallet when she was about 15 months. Call Chrippled childrens, and they will help you find the best doctors, dentists, etc. Also my daughter had to have speech therapy starting right after they fixed the pallet, and it went through grade school. She had braces in first grade and tubes in her ears twice. They cut the muscles that work the drainage tubes for her ears when they do the cleft pallet surgery. I would be glad to talk to you. She is now grown with two children of her own. You will survive, but it is hard. I was a single mom through the worst part.

J., you need to consult a Dentist and an Oral Surgeon so they can coincide treatment (TX) for the cleft palate. Hopefully your daughter is still young enough that surgery can give her a normal look and life.
Do it now while her palate is still soft and not connected which happens around 8-12 years.

A cleft palate results when the roof of the mouth doesn't close properly at that stage of development in the womb. I have 3 cleft palate children! One was a sub-mucal cleft which didn't require repair, one complete cleft of the palate, & one complete cleft of the palate which was severe. The biggest obstacle is feeding these children & keeping them well. They tend to have a lot of ear infections. There is a bottle called a Haberman feeder that you can get either through the medical probram in your state or can be purchased at any medical supply.My last 2 children had their palates repaired when they reached 25lb. They are 12 & 9 & doing fine! They had ear tubes for years but now they don't have them anymore & are doing great.Plus they all have Pierre' Robin Syndrome which is a small lower jaw. They will have to wear braces because this causes a big overbite.

You can have it fixed, the sooner and younger she is the better. If it is not fixed, speech will be a problem for her.

Mother of a child that had the same problem.

Contact Dr. Bob Oliver in Birmingham. He had to do surgery on my step daughter, and he is great!

Are you seeing a specialist??? Have they done surgery to repair the cleft? She needs to be seeing a speech therapist for sure, as well as ENT or others that can be a part of her "team."
Check out www.cleftline.org or www.acpa-cpf.org.