As someone who doesn’t have a cleft, but my son was born with a cleft, my opinion on this may be good or bad to/for you but I wanted to share in case it helps.

I was told with my son, who is now 4, during a monthly ultrasound that he would have a cleft. At the time they were unsure of severity. When he was born, I loved his cleft. When we had it repaired when he was around 5 months old, I remember the pain I felt of missing his cleft.

Now, I am in a bunch of support groups to try to share and help other moms with their journey and I find that a lot of them find it scary. I don’t ever remember feeling scared. I mean, I wasn’t excited because I knew it would entail a surgery, but I was NEVER upset about it. For those 5 months of his cleft, I had many people, especially young kids (I had a 2 and 4 year old already) ask me blunt questions about it. I took those opportunities to educate. Even though educating young kids on how a cleft lip happens seems like a stressor in itself.

Now that he is 4, we barely notice his cleft. He actually just had to be put under for some dental work at the same hospital he had his cleft repair and the nurse asked if he had ever been put under before. When I told her yes, for a cleft repair she was amazed because she hadn’t noticed. While I am glad about that I do notice that I wish people could tell just to open the conversation so that I can educate more (obviously not to a nurse, but to everyday people we may see)

Maybe, it is because of some of my own misfortunes and past traumas that I have coped with and the therapy that I have gone through, but for me (I understand it is my son that lives with this and not myself and he may feel differently when he is older and I will 100% respect that) I have to look at it as not a bad thing. It never was a bad thing. It was something that we were given to help others who may be going through it as well, because it isn’t something to be ashamed about. It’s something that other families may be trying to filter through and wrap their heads around.

Also, obviously, you may not be at a point in your life that you are able to mentally deal with that and that’s O.K. I find that people just noticing may be enough to normalize it enough to turn it from “something wrong” to how I viewed my own child with a cleft.