Baby Has Soft Cleft Palate

A typical cleft palate is noticed when a baby is born.

Baby has soft cleft palate.

Clefting results when there is not enough tissue in. The other way a baby feeds is by squeezing and stimulating the nipple to release milk. A baby born with a complete cleft palate has an opening in the roof of their mouth that runs across both the soft and hard palates. The clefts are repaired in part to facilitate feeding but most importantly to support normal speech.

Eating can be very difficult for a newborn if the soft palate is not properly formed. 2 cleft of hard and soft palate roughly 1 out of every 900 children are born with a cleft palate. The soft palate pushes food to the back of the throat when swallowing. This cleft is an opening underneath the mucous membrane the tissue that covers the palate.

If there is a cleft palate the baby is unable to close that gap and whenever he or she tries to suck the milk air leaks from the nose into the mouth through the cleft. About 70 of these children will also have a cleft lip. Cleft lip and cleft palate are facial and oral malformations that occur very early in pregnancy while the baby is developing inside the mother. It is the problems with speech that i d like to focus on.

Our two week old baby has pierre robin sequence prs with a soft cleft palate. A cleft palate occurs when the roof of the mouth does not close properly during a baby s early development inside the womb. Swallow study shows nasal reflux. The palate is made up of two parts either of which can be cleft the.

A submucous cleft palate smcp happens when the roof of the mouth or palate doesn t form properly when a baby is developing in the womb. But in babies with cleft lip and cleft palate the fusion never takes place or occurs only part way leaving an opening cleft.