Okay, I am one P R O U D Mama! For many reasons, but in this particular instance I am smiling because my cleft kiddo was asked to be part of a photo shoot his orthodontist was doing for an article South Bay Magazine was featuring her in for her incredible work with cleft kiddos and children with many different craniofacial anomalies. He is proud of his smile and so are we. He is the littlest guy in front; white…
Well, we ended up getting to our 3rd palatal expander with Gavin. The left bracket kept breaking apart in the same location due to his inability to leave crap alone. The 3rd expander our ortho built with more anchors so that it could be rigid and not allow for him to keep messing with it AND worked for almost 4 weeks! We were able to turn it every night and then the night before our appointment, guess what? “Mom, my…
Nothing can really prep you for the pain your child is about to embark on because of his/her cleft palate and the need for Phase 1 of Ortho Treatment. Just to the words, Rapid Palatal Expander sound scary. It seems overwhelming at first and it really is. So much information! Thankfully we have a great team and access to his team Social Worker. Everyone helped us to figure how to talk to him and get him to understand all that…
Yup, you read that right, the palatal expander lasted for one whole week! We even went on vacation with our water pik in tow and wouldn’t you just have guessed that the night before our follow up appointment with the ortho, my 8 y.o. walks into my room and says, “mom, something’s not right with my expander.” I get up to look and can clearly see one side of the expander just hanging down and not at all attached! I’m…
Our son was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate (BCLP) and has been in speech therapy since he was 18 months of age. I value private speech therapy and we are faithful in keeping our weekly appointments, incorporating speech techniques at home to gain consistency and working on a great deal of repetition. It’s just that at this point we have now added orthodontic appointments to our ‘have to’ weekly list and he has a palatal expander and…
Our son’s tongue is tied, but not so much so that his plastic surgeon or speech therapist recommends that he have surgery to clip the frenulum (tissue that is connected to the underside of his tongue) right away. When our son sticks his tongue out the tip of his tongue gets pulled into a “V” shape and he calls this his lizard tongue. His surgeons tell us he is tongue tied. Thankfully, our surgeons understand and agree that there…
As you may already know, having a cleft affected child means you need to be diligent when it comes to their dental care. It is not uncommon for cleft affected children to be born without some of their permanent teeth so taking care of the teeth they do have is of the utmost importance. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the phrase “where there are teeth, there is bone.” So keeping the teeth your cleft kiddo has,…
