Cleft lip and palate

I have not really blogged about Hope's cleft lip and palate. This is the medical condition she was born with and is probably the sole reason her birth parents felt like they could not raise her. They would never have had access to all of the help that she will need over the years. Hope was the recipient of an aid foundation that repaired her lip about 10 months ago. The difference is amazing. We have several pictures of her before the surgery and she is hardly recognizable. Her palate, on the other hand, has not been repaired. It is still wide open. Her teeth are a mess. She has about four teeth that are in her open palate. Her gum line doesn't connect and the teeth she does have do not look to be in very good shape. In fact, we immediately noticed that one of her teeth was very rotten. In the week that she has been in our care, she has lost that tooth. I don't know when it fell out, but the tooth is gone. Other issues that we can notice is that her jaw doesn't line up and that the bridge of her nose is very flat.

What does all of this mean? It means that poor Hope is going to have at least 5 - 10 surgeries over the years. Her first surgery will be to repair her palate. We will try to get her in for that surgery as soon as possible. She is very verbal, but there are so many sounds that she is unable to make because she doesn't have a roof to her mouth. We need to get that taken care of ASAP. She will probably need at least one more palate surgery as she grows and her palate needs to grow with her. She will need a lip revision surgery, possibly two nose jobs and jaw surgery. She will also need a bone graft surgery, where bone will be taken from her hip and put into her gums to make a complete gumline. From what I understand, she will probably also need tubes in her ears. On top of all of this, she will need extensive dental work and orthodontia. I know of one woman whose cleft child needed so much dental work that the bill literally came to $20,000. Thankfully, we have an additional insurance policy that we can purchase that will cover all of Hope's medical procedures, including dental and orthodontia work. Not everyone has this option, so we are very thankful for it. Hope will also most likely require years of speech therapy.

While all of this is very overwhelming, we are thankful that the surgeries come one at a time. We are also thankful that Hope was made available for adoption so that she can have all of these issues fixed. By the time she reaches her teen years, you will never be able to tell that she once had all of these issues. She will be a regular teenager with a regular mouth. For now, we will take things one day at a time.