Worried about first surgery

[Lori (tlcarst@rconnect.co]

We have a seven week old son with a complete, unilateral cleft
lip and palate. His lip repair is scheduled for 6/23. He will be
16 weeks old then. We are looking forward to his surgery in some
ways, but scared to death too. The thought of them "putting
him under" is almost more than I can stand to think about. I
guess I need to hear from others about whether or not your
children suffered. Please be honest, as I feel it will be best to
be prepared for the worst. How long were your children
hospitalized? What was the pain management afterwards? Were there
stitches to be removed or dissolving ones? Did you have to travel
any distances soon after surgery(our surgeonis six hours away at
the Univ. of IA) Any info would be appreciated. I would also love
to hear from anyone thru e-mail. Our address is
tlcarst@rconnect.com.

[JoSmiles@aol.com]

Lori,



I have three children - Jacob, Joey and Jessica -- all of
them born with cleft lip and palate. I know exactly how you feel
about that first surgery. We have some information on the Wide
smiles site that could be of tremendous help to you. Go to
HTTP://www.widesmiles.org for tons of information. there is a
document called "The Reality of the Miracle" that tells
you exactly what to expect from the first surgery. for that
autoresponder, send any email message to WS162@widesmiles.org and
the article will be sent directly to your mail box. There are
many other articles there that could be of tremendous help. To
get the guide of all the articles available, just send any email
message to guide@widesmiles.org Be warned -- the guide alone is
about 15 pages long.. all articles that are related to clefting.
All free for the asking. You may also want to consider joining
Cleft-talk. its an online discussion group. to do that, send the
following message to listproc@mother.com <subscribe cleft-talk (your name)>




I hope that all helps you. Joanne

[bboyes@ozemail.com.au]

You will be more worried than your child will ever be.My
parents said there worst feeling was leaving me in the ward and
walking away.We are about to undergo a similar exp. with our baby
and the practise here is ;12 week lip & palete repair with a
unilateral cleft and then palette repair soft at 9 months or when
speech starts.A great site to show you a neat example is
www.acay.com.au/~gsm/clefts.htm Take care.