Children's Hospital

I owe an update on our visit to the Cleft Palate Clinic at Children's Hospital on Tuesday. It went very well and I'm very impressed by how this team will work together. We met with a the Director of the Clinic who is a plastic surgeon. He told us they will do the surgery when she's about a year old and he wants us to come back in September and then we will schedule surgery in November or December. Then we met with a Nurse Practioner who weighed, measured, and checked her out. Everyone we met with was so impressed with how will she eats and is growing. We discussed her special bottles and she gave us a number on how to get more. After that a Genetics Counselor came in to talk to us. She checked out Grace head to toe and to see if she had any other issues to go along with the cleft. She also asked Eric and I a ton of questions about our family background and any other problems within our parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. After all the info, she told us that the Cleft Palate is a multi-factor birth defect that can be caused by both genetic factors and environmental. Our chance of having a second child with a cleft is higher than most because of Grace, but is still only about 3%. Next we spoke to a Speech Therapist. Since Grace isn't speaking right now there isn't much she will do, but we may need to work with a therapist after surgery when she begins talking, so we can be sure that she speaks correctly. The speech therapist also discusses feeding problems, but since Grace eats and gains weight like a champ, there wasn't much to discuss. Next came a dentist. He checked out Grace's mouth and we were pleased to find that all of her dental structures are in place and look normal. Her cleft doesn't appear to affect any of the bone structure of her mouth, so we shouldn't need any major dental work or have any problems, unless something appears when her teeth start to come in. Lastly, we spoke to an ENT specialist (Ear, Nose, and Throat). His main concern was her ears and ear infections. Babies tend to get more ear infections than adults since the tube that drains fluid from behind the ear drum is more horizontal than it is in adults due to the shape of infants heads. There is a muscle that helps pull the tube down to drain fluid that connects in the center of the palate, so in babies with cleft palates, there is an even greater chance of poor drainage and resulting ear infections. He checked her ears and there is already some fluid build up. Unless she has a lot of ear infections before then, the plan will be to most likely have tubes put in her ears as a preventative measure at the same time as her cleft surgery. After the ENT, we made our appointment for September and went home. Overall diagnosis...the main feeding concern seems to be going well and they will take care of the rest of it in about a year.

Well, I have more to discuss regarding weaning and other things going on, but Grace seems to be waking up from her nap and I'm sure she'll be ready for her bottle.