Taping and using nasal stents is critical to your child’s surgical outcome. The first thing I would want to know is that you should take the duoderm template your surgeon or nurse gave you and cut out at least a dozen of these and store in a Ziploc at your changing table. You are going to want these to be handy and available when you need them. Put a few in a Ziploc and have them in your diaper bag as well.  Since you are visiting your Cleft Team weekly in the first few months of your baby’s life make sure to get extra duoderm tape to keep on hand at home so that you are not in fear of running out.

We also were given 2 sets of nasal stents so that we always had a clean one on hand in case he ripped them out or it was time for his bath, etc.  That way I wasn’t having to clean a pair and wait to get the stents back in.  I could clean them later when I had a moment.

Your baby’s face will become red and irritated from the taping and this is normal.  Your baby is drooling and the tape is being removed and replaced constantly so their skin gets tugged on and becomes red and rashy looking.  His doctor recommended using Aquaphor to keep his skin moist.  I would take a little bit of breast milk and soak a cotton ball with it and then apply to red irritated spots.  This helped quite a bit.  I would also recommend using coconut oil instead of Aquaphor, but this is my preference.

One thing you must know is that you are the integral part in your child’s care here.  The outcome of your child’s appearance is going to be due in great part to how diligent you are in keeping the tape affixed, placement of the tape, and making sure to keep those nasal stents in more often than not.  We took the nasal stents out at bath time and that was it. He wore the stents the remainder of the time and I believe this helped his nostrils to not collapse.  We also kept his duoderm tape in place at all times.  If we noticed that one side of his face didn’t look as symmetrical as the other we would manipulate the tape to get the result we wanted.  Our plastic surgeon encouraged this and told us that she could give us the tools to do the work, but that the actual work was up to us to do at home with him.  She was right.  She wasn’t there 24/7 with him.  It was our job as his parents to do what was asked of us no matter how uncomfortable or difficult it may seem.  He needed for us to do this for him so that his lip surgery could go smoothly and to give his surgeon an easier time of being able to stitch  him up and not have to tug and pull on his tissues causing them to not sit quite right.

It was explained to us that in the first few weeks after being born that there is an extraordinary amount of estrogen in our infants tissues making his skin much more pliable and susceptible to manipulation.  This is what makes it so very important to be able to begin taping immediately after being born and to be diligent from the get go.  There is such a small window to be able to manipulate their tissues that you want to take full advantage of that. Their little faces and bodies are growing rapidly and you need to make sure that taping and placing the nasal stents is your priority each day.

You will only be taping and placing stents these first 3 months until lip repair surgery and in the grand scheme of things that is not a lot of time.  Take the taping and stents seriously and make sure to keep them on all the time.  It will make the difference you are hoping it does.

tdowell22

I live in SoCal with my husband and two kids. Love reading, writing, being a foodie and coffee aficionado. I support other moms of cleft affected children. Our family is continuing along on this journey and we seek to help other families navigate terrain we've already covered. All Smiles is what we want for all cleft kiddos!