Child number 3(unplanned but very welcome! thought we had lost this one in the summer, been a bit tough) is due in February and during scans a cleft lip/palate has been picked up(poss palate not 100% cant really tell tell birth). Dear old NHS has been fantastic and the services have been great, so feel well supported and informed.
Any folks been through this one? The main worries are around feeding and never nice putting your little ones into surgery.
Get in touch with your local speech and language therapy service and they will help regarding feeding and when the time comes speech. Hope all goes well at the birth and congratulations on expecting number 3
Our son had a slight cleft palate, not visable and only picked up once he was 4/5 after he'd had some speech theropy and other tests.
Basicailly he just sounded a little nasally, unless he had a cold then he was a little difficult to understand for some people.
After tests it showed that 60% or so of the air was coming out of his noise when he spoke (hence the trouble understanding him when he had a cold). He had an operation which simply moves the muscles back a bit to create a better seal when he speaks.
He improved down to c.20% when he was last tested a few years ago, but we took the decission to not put him back through a repeat operation (pretty common, but we was not made aware of multiple Op's prior to the first). For a few reason's, mainly he was still re-learning to speak now through he's mouth (this is still ongoing) and secondly he's still growing so the gap could get larger through he's teens, so there was no guarentee that there would be more to follow.
Cheers, yes the cleft team from Bristol will be up within 24hrs to assess and suss out feeding.
Where are you based, tang?
Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.
My mum is based in the Wirral. . Bit far away but she's an expert in the field of cleft palettes.
Let me know if you want her details.
Thanks Samuri, I might well be in touch.
