We were called into the doctors this week because our doctor had to go over our last ultra sound with us. We had to wait two days to find out what the problem was, and why he was calling us in. These two days were very hard to get through without thinking the worst.
We went in today and found out that our baby has a 90% chance it has a cleft lip. Inicially when he told us it was a celf lip I was SO THANKFUL it had nothing to do with the heart or the brain or any other life threating problem.
BUt I also didn't know anything about clef lips or what it meant for us. The doctor went to explain this.
They don't know how bad our babies clef lip is, if it's the lip and the palat or not. If it's in one place or two places. He is sending us to a specialist at the Royal Alexander Hospital, we will have an appointment there in two weeks, there the doctor will be doing the ultra sound him self, it's a special machine that gives very clear pictures. So we will see if the clft is up to the nose, if it's a cleft palat and lip or just lip... and so on. So basically right now we don't know how bad it is.
Babies with this condition struggle with eating. Our baby may have to be fed through a tube. Usually the first surgery happens at 10 weeks old, where they will mend the upper lip togther. Depending on how bad the cleft is the baby can go through 4-12 surgeries.
Babies with this condition also struggle with ear infctions, some babies even lose their hearing because of this.
The jaw usually needs to have a surgery done to re-aline it, information says to expect many visits to the dentists with some surgery involved with that to. Again, depending on how bad it actually is.
Children often take much more time to talk, and some times struggle alot with certain sounds.
Physically our baby can look "normal" very quicky even before it is two, it just depends on how bad it is.
We are obveously very upset about this. I can't keep my mind from thiking about how much pain and trama our little bundle of joy may have to go through. I just keep thinking about the pain, surgery, trama... But also in the midst of it have faith. We are going to pray and believe. Please seriously join us, I would love to go to the doctors in edmonton and fin out there is no problem, or a very minor cleft. Anything that will ease the pain for our baby.
If you have questions please post them here,on face book, or e-mails. We can't afford phone calls at this time (not enough minutes on our cell phone plan).
We will up date this as soon as we know more.
Kathryn
