Cleft Palate

Today we went to visit the surgeon who will be correcting Wu Yi's cleft palate.  We liked him very much and Wu Yi was cooperative during the exam.  We have tentatively scheduled the surgery to happen April 20 (assuming we don't have any insurance glitches) and she will have to spend one or two nights at the Children's Hospital.  We were told that she would have a fair amount of pain for 7-10 days, and that each day would be better than the one before.  She will also have to be on a soft food diet for 2 weeks.  Fortunately, her ramen noodles and rice are ok.  I am glad to be getting it done while I am still on maternity leave and I feel like there is no reason to delay.  She isn't speaking at all right now, and the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can address any speech therapy needs she may require.  I feel like Wu Yi and I have a strong enough relationship to get through this together and she seems to trust what I say and do.
For those of you who are not familiar with cleft lip and cleft palate, I will give you a quick rundown.  These disorders occur during fetal development and, although not completely understood, are most likely attributed to lack of folate in the mother during pregnancy.  It is relatively common, even in the US.  With cleft lip, there is a split that divides the upper lip and sometimes travels all the way up into the nose.  With cleft palate, the split travels from the front to the back of the palate ~ the roof of your mouth.  There are varying degrees to which either one of these disorders may exist and they may occur together or alone.  Wu Yi was born with both.  She had surgery to fix her lip shortly after her birth mother abandoned her when she was a toddler.  Her palate was never repaired.  If you looked in her mouth, you would see a split about the width of your finger which goes from the back of her upper teeth all the way back to her throat.  Its like a shadowy canyon.  It basically means that she has an opening from her mouth which travels up into her sinuses.  Sometimes these kids don't eat well.  Babies can have a hard time sucking and oftentimes the food will end up coming out their noses.  They can also get frequent ear infections from fluids which back up all the way into their ears.  These kids usually have some speech issues as they have to force their tongue against the cleft to block the sound from coming out of their nose.  Their voices are often described as "nasally".  Wu Yi eats fine and has never had anything come back out of her nose.  She does have kind of a "harsh" speech pattern but I'm not sure how much of that was just her language. We are hearing mixed predictions about her needs for speech therapy ~ some professionals have told us that just learning a new language may be all she needs to do.  The surgery alone will make it so that her tongue will have to get used to moving in a different way.
The surgery sounds a bit gruesome.  The surgeon will basically be peeling off the lining of the roof of her mouth and then stretching it across to cover the cleft opening.  Ideally, this should have been done when she was 18 months old.  At the age of almost 8 (her birthday is this Friday!) the roof of her mouth has expanded enough to make the surgery a bigger challenge.  Our surgeon is optimistic that the repair can be done with just one procedure, but it is possible that she may need one more.  Then, around the age of 10 (when most of her baby teeth are out) she will need another surgery which puts a permanent bone graft in.  And finally, when she is a teenager and mostly grown, she will have some cosmetic touch-ups to her nose ~ her left nostril is very flat and wide.  Other than her cleft palate, Wu Yi is very healthy.  We do have her scheduled for a hearing test in case she had frequent infections.  However, her ears look good now and she doesn't have any obvious hearing problems so I am not too concerned.
We are on spring break this week, so Don has been home alot more than usual, and Wu Yi still is not comfortable when he is around.  She becomes the withdrawn child she was in China and it is a BIG BUMMER!  I took her to the park without Don on Saturday and she livened right up and, frankly, is a total daredevil on climbing walls and fireman poles.  She is getting more and more bold on the swing as well.  There were lots of other kids there and she was completely as ease with them.  Of course, none of them were paying any attention to her ~ that is totally her preference!  She is comfortable being anonymous and detests being the center of attention.  A tiny little firecracker of a girl!