My eldest son was born with an incomplete, unilateral cleft lip with no initial appearance of palate involvement. However, as teeth began to erupt it was clear his gum line was somewhat disturbed by the cleft defect as well.
Honestly, aside from the initial two lip repair surgeries (one at 2 months and another to fix the botched first surgery at 2 years) the cleft has been the least of our concerns when it comes to our firstborn. While having a cleft made him a shoe in for speech therapy services, his needs weren't particularly articulation intensive. Rather his needs were more complex with deficits in comprehension and language formation. My inclination for quite a long time was that he had an Auditory Processing Disorder, however, it was much easier to diagnose him with PDD NOS (now considered to be part of the Autism Spectrum) then it was to have someone confirm my suspicion of APD. Either way, the therapy options available to us were pretty much the same, speech therapy.
Unlike other cleft affected children my son hasn't had to contend with multiple complicated surgeries. Even before his initial repair he had little trouble breastfeeding and thus has never had any ear infections (also a rare feat in the cleft affected world). Perhaps most importantly, nobody ever notices he was born with a cleft and I've never heard him once say anything about it. Most days, we never even think about it.
However, now that he's in the orthodontic phase the couple of malocluded teeth are requiring some strange and uncomfortable orthodontic applications. A month before braces were placed he had to have one tooth removed, which he tolerated very well. Then to move the largest malocluded tooth, they had to put it under traction of sorts and add "turbos" (sort of like tooth stilts) to prevent him from closing his mouth into a tight bite and leave clearance for the turning tooth. The turbos change the way he's used to resting his jaws and (as I can only imagine) make one uncomfortable with a constant strange sensation of a pencil always stuck between your teeth. Finally the day for the turbos to be removed came and we were all much happier for it.
Unfortunately, today they decided that they needed to place turbos again when they discovered that this second tooth (previously unable to decent as it was being blocked by the first malocluded tooth) is also twisted 90 degrees from who it should be oriented. Thus, he's back to having the dreaded turbos and that weird mouth sensation again. While he's lucky to have a full mouth of teeth (many cleft affected folks are missing quite a few) to work with, days like today are annoying reminders of his birth defect.
On the way home a show on Ave Maria Radio was talking about the concept of offering up your suffering for the sake of others. So I tried to explain to my son that perhaps he could devote his discomfort to the good of others. I don't think he quite grasped the concept, but he is being a trooper so far. I pray they can take those turbos off next time, as they really are quite awful, making eating more difficult than it need be.
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