My child has cleft lip and palate AMA

[Cleftmum44]

There are so many assumptions about clefts so I thought I would do this. Some people just assume things and are happy to be corrected but some think they know better than the surgeons!

Cleft lip and palate can be part of a much wider array of conditions in a syndrome; it is for my daughter. We didn't get a final diagnosis for her underlying chromosome condition until she was two. She has a congenital heart defect and had to have heart surgery before the anaesthetists would touch her for anything else, and had to get bigger to be able to withstand the heart surgery. So she was nearly 18 months old before her lip was repaired.

I was (and remain) very, very good at making unflinching eye contact with people who'd been staring.

(I don't mean just looking - she looked really different, and the Ng tube didn't help - but there's a different between noticing and staring).

How do you feel about the TV adverts for charities in the third world with children with cleft lip and palate? Do you donate?