Hi, my name is Laura and I have a daughter who will be 5 in February 2011. She was born with a cleft of the soft palate in 2006. I wasn’t aware of this when she was first born. Harriet had her operation to have it repaired when she was 6 months old, she also had another operation to fit grommets as she had glue ear quite badly in both ears. This cleared her hearing up loads and her speach came on in leaps and bounds. Harriet still sees her therapist regulary and is having trouble saying ‘s’ ‘f’ and a few others. So ‘bus’ sounds like ‘buh’ ‘shark’ sounds like ‘sh..hark’ They have done further testing by doing an xray of her palate and when they couldnt’ see what they needed with this, she then had a camera down her nose to view her palate from above. She had to talk when the camera was there and allow the surgeon to see what he needed to see. They found that she still has small holes and he said that she has done really well as her palate was very small from the start. She is now on the waiting list for a re-repair of her palate, which is provisionally booked for the 22nd march this year.
The link that i have put with my bio is a blog that i wrote for a website about Harriets cleft palate and what i went through, with my feelings etc. I have done it to make more people aware of clefts and to hopefully help others understand a little about what is in store etc.