Hi, my name is Maria and my daughter Vada was born 8-13-06, she is actually going in for palate surgery on Tuesday the 14th! Time flies! She was born with a complete unilateral cleft lip and palate. She went through her lip/nose surgery at 5 months. (If you would like to see pics, email me at
marialouise79@yahoo.com) Her surgery lasted about 4 hours. Felt faster though. She had a hard time with the morphine they gave her for pain control right out of surgery, but they wont give oral meds till they are eating enough. Remember that you know your baby best and if you feel he is in pain be sure to give him the pain medicine (once it is up to you how often he gets it), there is no sense in him feeling pain... However I guess there is another pain med (IV) that they can give right out of surgery and I would recommend asking for the alternative to morphine. It seems quite a few children get night terrors from it. She would wake up crying every 10 minutes and then fall right back to sleep. It was hard to hear and hard to sleep through. Remember that you need to be rested in order to take care of your baby. As far as arm restraints...we took them off the second we got home, she wasnt putting things in her mouth really at that point and she touched her lip maybe twice, realized it hurt and left it alone. Of course not all babies would leave it alone which is why they reccomend them. And when she did have them on she was fine with them, we really took them off for us, we felt so guilty tying her up like that i guess. Feeding...Generally they will give you a syringe to take home if your baby doesnt take to the bottle right away. The syringe is a pain but it gets the fluids in. It just takes a while to feed! As far as something for the scar, we never used anything. Just be sure to massage his lip several times a day after it heals. It keeps it from becoming very ropy and hard. Vada will be a year on monday and you can still see the pink scar but both sides of her lip look symetrical now, which is amazing considering when she was born she pretty much had no lip at all on the left side! Know that for us anyway, all chaos only really lasted maybe 5 days total! And also know that so many of us on this forum have been through the same things so if you need to vent or need advice we are here!:) email me off forum if you would like (
marialouise79@yahoo.com) Like I said you know your baby best! Take all advice with a grain of salt(even doctors) and come up with a plan that makes you and Aiden feel the best about all of his treatments! Doctors are wonderful and they are there to guide you but no one can care for Aiden like you can! Good luck to you and your family and baby Aiden!
Maria