Coburn Kids

Sorry for no updates!  Not even on Caden’s birthday either, but I have pics to post I promise.

The last few days Daniel and I have been agonizing over Caden’s next surgery. It’s so hard to have to make these decisions as a parent, it’s basically a choose-your-kids-possible-future-complications, if you will, decision. Apparently, Utah repairs cleft palates differently then the rest of the nation, more in line with Europe actually. The typical repair timeline for a cleft lip and palate in Utah (and internationally) is:

2-3 months old – lip repair
9-12 months old – soft palate repair
4-5 years old – hard palate closure

The rest of the US follows this timeline:

2-3 months old – lip repair
9-18 months old – soft palate repair and hard palate closure

There are pros and cons with each method. The reasoning for doing an earlier closure is to protect speech and hopefully save yourself some speech impediments. The con with early closure is that it could restrict facial growth.  This is repairable though with surgery. The reasoning with later closure is to protect the facial symmetry but you risk the speech. Neither way is guaranteed, as even with the later closure you still might need to move the upper jaw forward at a later age regardless, about a 25% chance. It’s very controversial actually, deciding which order to close the hard palate in. Not even surgeons can agree on the best method and there is research for both sides for and against.

We met with Caden’s plastic surgeon today and we’ve decided to close Caden’s soft and hard palate together. His gumline just has notches rather then gaps, like you can see with other cleft kids, so we’ll wait until Caden is older to see what needs to happen there.  Depending on how his teeth come in could be a deciding factor and since we don’t even need to do a bone graft, Dr. Warnock uses a special protein which saves the child from having to have bone removed from somewhere else in the body, that surgery is a lot gentler and less painful as well.

So the date for Caden’s next surgery is October 20th. No time yet but it will be 2-3 hours long.  We’ll be admitted for 2 days and then he won’t be able to have anything chunky, with edges or probably even a bottle for 2 weeks afterwards. It’s either sippy cup or (since we get to cheat) his feeding tube.