4 week old with cleft in soft palate

[silasmom]

Hi! My son Silas is 4 weeks old yesterday and has a cleft in his soft palate. I notice that his nose is sometimes quite stuffy and am wondering if this is normal for babies with cleft palate. He's a very healthy little guy otherwise. Also wondering if most babies with cleft palate have tubes put in their ears. We see the ENT specialist next month to arrange for this. We are told that his cleft surgery will be when he is between 9 and 12 months old.
Thanks
Charis
mom to
Ella and Reese identical twins born Aug 2005
Silas Dec 2006

[hatchedk]

Andy frequently gets stuffy noses from spit up...it goes out his nose!

Most cleft kids need tubes because the muscle that opens the Eustachian tube between the throat and the ear is in the soft palate. Swallowing makes the muscle contract and opens the Eustachian tubes. If you don't have that muscle intact, you can not clear your ears....and junk gets caught up there.
You are lucky to be getting it checked so early, we waited until 5 months when we found out he couldn't hear conversational speech due to the fluid in his ears. It took another 6 weeks to get the surgery scheduled...too long for a baby not to hear!
Good luck!

[jacksmom]

From what I understand, just about all cleft babies get tubes in their ears, and might I add... they are a GREAT thing! Almost right after my son's tubes were placed, we noticed a significant improvement in his fussiness, feeding and SLEEPING! I think they are just so uncomfortable with all of that fluid build-up, and when they get that taken care of, they feel so much better. Our son's tubes were placed at 12 weeks. Our ENT didn't really feel comfortable putting him to sleep before he weighed 10 pounds, unless it was just absolutely necessary. Since then, we have had a few ear infections, but nothing major. I also agree that the stuffiness in his nose is probably just from formula. If it really bothers you, you can suction it out, or use those infant saline drops to rinse it out. I usually just leave it alone!
Good Luck!
Allison

[HollyBee]

My little guy is now just about 11 weeks, he's got the soft cleft palate too, he's pretty "shnooky" in the nose while he eats, he's got a cold right now and he seems to have a pretty "normal" baby cold, I don't see any difference because of the cleft other than when he sneezes after he's burped up a bit. We were told that they won't do tubes unless they see it's necessary, so far so good...no ear troubles and his hearing test that they did Dec 20 showed normal and good. We go back to the Plastic Surgeon when he's 4 months to prepare for his surgery at 6 months. As for sleeping he's a catnapper.... 15-30 mins at the best of times, he still wants to eat every 2 hours without fail during the day and then he'll go 3-5 in the night, keeps me busy.

Hope that's a little helpful.....

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