Life after cleft lip surgery: Finding Brooks’ smile

When Rick and Aimee Bellew learned that their second child Brooks would be born with a cleft lip and soft palate, they weren’t sure what to expect. So like most people looking for information, they took their questions to the Internet—which turned out to be a mistake. “Just minutes into our first cleft lip search on Google and we were already devastated,” Aimee remembers. “The pictures staring back at us from the computer screen were so severe. We thought ‘there’s no way a child with a condition this serious looking can be otherwise healthy.’ It was very overwhelming.” In the coming weeks, they met with doctors and specialists for further testing, and everything indicated that—aside from Brooks’s cleft—he was developing like any other healthy baby. And while the Bellews’ local care team gave them good news, they didn’t have the information on cleft lip repair that the family was looking for. “We were grateful to learn that Brooks’s problem was largely cosmetic, but at the same time the doctors we were seeing couldn’t discuss long-term treatment plans with us in the detail we wanted,” Rick says. “Knowing your newborn will need multiple operations is scary. You want to know as much as you can, and we simply weren’t getting enough information at that point.” Worried, Aimee went to a friend who works as an obstetrician and asked for help in understanding Brooks’s diagno...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: All posts Advanced Fetal Care Center cleft lip & palate Cleft lip and Palate Program John Mulliken our patients' stories Source Type: news