怕你看不到华人的帖子，第871楼：
Sorry can't input Chinese, but I really want to share my exp about cleft
lips since I have been working with preemies as well as cleft kids for 7
years.
I personally hope all families/kids are happy and healty. But for cleft kids
/babies, besides blessing, we also need to respect the facts:
1, Once the baby is diagnosed as cleft lip in Sonogram, it is an indication
that the baby has median line closure problem. It means the baby may have
very severe closure problem(leaking problem) with the heart, lung, etc, any
organ vertically along the belly button, which mostly can NOT be diagnosed
by Sonogram.
2, If the baby just got cleft lip, then s/he is the luckiest ones among all
cleft babies. Because s/he just need to do a couple of surgeries before
grown up (because the scar from surgery won't grow when kids growing, so the
cleft need to be re-cut and re-saw before they grown into adult)
3, The worse case for cleft is palate cleft. If the children have palate
cleft, the most popular problem is that there will more teeth grow out of
the palate cleft, and they need to keep being pulled out so the face won't
be mis-shaped. I have seen a case there are 8 teeth growing out of one cleft
. (I personally think it is a big torture for the whole family both mentally
, physically and financially, since they visit all dental dr, ENT dr.....
etc all the time)
4, The worst case, you can never imagine. If the baby has problem with heart
, lung and there is a way to fix, that is very lucky. But there are cases
the baby have too severe problem that it can't be even fixed by surgery
since they are too young, so they have to be fed by punching holes on their
stomach, and sending food thru tubes. Some of them suvived, some of them
just can't make it....
5, My boss has been working in this area for 40+yrs. I asked him if he would
keep cleft baby if he knew it during preganancy. He said no just because
there are too much unknown risk there.
So this is really life-long battle not only for parents, but more for the
kids.
