SMILES

My daughter was born last March with a minor cleft lip and soft palate. Her lip has already been fixed and looks terrific, but now we are facing surgery of her soft palate in April. Any information that anyone would have on the procedure, recovery, or just anything in general would be very helpful. Thank you!

Since you've already been through surgery...you already know a lot. As far as the palate surgery goes, there really wasn't alot of difference with my son. Make sure to ask your surgeon questions about how long you'll need to use the restraints, how you should feed your daughter post-op, and any activity restrictions. Zac was pretty slow to eat after his palate surgery...but we were persistent. And within a week we were back to normal on the eating scale. I wish you the best of luck! Angela

I might be writing too late, but here I am. We went through the soft palate repair just this month (Feb . Everything went sooo well - except the length of the hospital stay. We didn't know he would wait 3 days to even let a drop of MM go into his mouth. He was just hurting & needed more time than we had anticipated. We held him alot - almost around the clock & he got brave enough eventually. (He was hungry, too, I'm sure.) )


As far as restraints & any special instructions, we had none. It was far enough back in his mouth not to be a problem. They said just no hard things in his mouth for a week or two.


Best of luck to you & write if you want - lwhitt@gfd.com


Lydia