Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Another view
Today I had a regular ob appointment. My doctor, who rocks, grabbed her bedside ultrasound so we could take another look at little girl's cleft. So I got a much better look at it. We could clearly see a fairly wide cleft on what I think is her right side, and a narrower one on her left. My doctor said she could not be 100% certain she saw the cleft on the left, it likely there, but certainly not as wide. And, I have printouts!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Finding Out
This morning we had our 20 week ultrasound and found out our little girl has a cleft lip, and likely a cleft palate. The cleft is on both sides, or bilateral.
I'm actually taking this a little harder than I thought I would. I had a cleft lip myself, so we knew our children would be at an increased risk. Mine was really minor, just partial, no palate involvement and a couple of good surgeries resulted in it being barely noticable - I even have to point it out to doctors sometimes. I took the super-strength dose of folic acid to at least help reduce my risk of having a baby with one also, and it obviously wasn't enough. I have just incredibly mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I know something about the challenges she will face - but more so than me, since it sounds like it is worse than mine was. As I get older, I rarely even think about or feel self-conscious about the scar, but when I was young, and so focused on appearances, it bothered me much more.
And then, there is the whole aspect of now being a parent of a child who is going to have to have surgery during infancy, is going to have breastfeeding and eating difficulties as a baby, and is just simply not going to look like the rest of the world. That's hard. And the added guilt that it is obviously my fault, my genetics that caused this to happen. From that perspective, I guess I am a little more accepting, since possibly having a child with a cleft lip is something I've known about and been prepared for since high school genetics class - it almost feel inevitable in some ways (though in reality my risk was still low, less than 8%). And such mixed feelings, since I have a healthy, productive, normal life - how can I feel so sorry for this child, when I have a similar defect?
I'm actually taking this a little harder than I thought I would. I had a cleft lip myself, so we knew our children would be at an increased risk. Mine was really minor, just partial, no palate involvement and a couple of good surgeries resulted in it being barely noticable - I even have to point it out to doctors sometimes. I took the super-strength dose of folic acid to at least help reduce my risk of having a baby with one also, and it obviously wasn't enough. I have just incredibly mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I know something about the challenges she will face - but more so than me, since it sounds like it is worse than mine was. As I get older, I rarely even think about or feel self-conscious about the scar, but when I was young, and so focused on appearances, it bothered me much more.
And then, there is the whole aspect of now being a parent of a child who is going to have to have surgery during infancy, is going to have breastfeeding and eating difficulties as a baby, and is just simply not going to look like the rest of the world. That's hard. And the added guilt that it is obviously my fault, my genetics that caused this to happen. From that perspective, I guess I am a little more accepting, since possibly having a child with a cleft lip is something I've known about and been prepared for since high school genetics class - it almost feel inevitable in some ways (though in reality my risk was still low, less than 8%). And such mixed feelings, since I have a healthy, productive, normal life - how can I feel so sorry for this child, when I have a similar defect?
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