Cleft Palate and Cleft Lips
Posted by Babies - 14/01/09 at 06:01 amCleft Palate and Cleft Lips
Every day a large number of babies are born with cleft palate or cleft lips. These can cause a number of related problems like, hearing problem, problematic teeth, etc. But nowadays these difficulties can be done away by means of corrective surgeries.
The success rate of these surgeries are also very high thus there is nothing to be disappointed about if someone’s baby is born with these kinds of problems. The reason for cleft palate or cleft lips is not known yet. The parts that are supposed to join together do not join in some of the babies’ growing in the mother’s wombs.
Some researches point out that smoking during pregnancy may lead to such type of incidents. Clefts starts developing within 6 weeks of gestation and gradually the gaps started forming. Cleft lips can be identified partially by ultrasound at 18 weeks of pregnancy, but cleft palate cannot be detected before birth of the baby.
Babies born with cleft palate generally have problems in sucking their food. The feeding bottles normally found are not suitable for these babies. They require special bottles to be fed. Special soft bottles are available. The pharmacists can help in this purpose. But, babies with cleft lip have no problem in sucking in ordinary ways.
A cleft lip surgery is normally performed within three months of the birth of the baby while, a cleft palate is operated at an age of 6 to 9 months. Post operation there remains some scar mark and the nose assumes a bit irregular shape, but other wise everything is normal.
