Education on Cleft lip and cleft palate

As you are aware, our beautiful daughter, Katie, was born with a birth defect of a cleft lip and cleft palate. Her cleft lip was repaired in China when she was seven months old. The Chinese doctors then repaired her cleft palate when she was 17 months old. I thought I would post some interesting facts on clefts to help educate our family and friends who are not very familiar with this condition.

If you rub your finger above your top lip, you will feel two ridges. Those are in fact the cleft scars of a non cleft-affected person. Those tissues naturally join by the fourth week of pregnancy.

The palate is then formed out of the structure that begins as the tongue and palate. Between the fourth and eight week of pregnancy, the tongue drops down and the palate segments then move from the sides and fuse in the center. Run your tongue across your hard palate from side to side and you will feel the seam where the two sides fused.

A cleft, therefore, is not something that is formed, so much as it is something that does not form. Everyone began life with a cleft. For 699 out of 700 of us, the cleft fuses before birth. For that one in 700, it fails to fuse.

One child in 33 is born with some sort of birth defect. One in 700 is born with a cleft-related birth defect. It occurs most often among Asians, Latinos and Native Americans.

The causes could be a gene passed down from the birth father or birth mother or from the lack of folic acid in the birth mother's diet, or from the pollution in the air.

A parent with a cleft has a minimum of 5% chance of passing the cleft along.

Some famous people who were born with a cleft:
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Tom Brokaw
Mary Crosby
Stacy Keech
Cheech Marin (from Cheech and Chong)

I've listed two non profit organizations where you can learn more about clefting. With donations, these types of organization can provide the necessary surgeries all across the world:
www.smiletrain.org
www.lovewithoutboundaries.com

We are so anxious to bring home our precious daughter next month. Her future will entail additional surgeries for her clefting condition as her mouth develops and her permanent teeth begin to come in along with cosmetic surgery for scars. She will most likely need speech therapy to help her pronounciation, and will most likely need braces to help straighten her permanent teeth. When we started out this adoption process, I have to tell you that the special need of cleft was not one of the options we were going to consider. I thank the Lord every day for changing our hearts and leading us towards this little girl who needs a forever family. I type this with tears in my eyes and love in my heart for a precious soul that I am so ready to hold, love, and make part of our family.