cleft palate question?

I have taken care of a few babies with submucous cleft palates. Sometimes they are able to put off the surgery until the child is 4 or 5 years old and every so often one doesn't require surgery. They will watch your son for feeding difficulties, breathing difficulties and ear infections, among other things. The timing of possible surgery will depend on how his feedings go, how well he gains weight, how easily he gets ear infections, etc. If these don't seem to be a problem when he is an infant, some doctors postpone the surgery until the child is older to see how their speech develops. If there is major difficulty with the speech, they will do surgery at that time. If the speech develops OK, they may decide to not do the surgery.

Not all cases of submucous cleft palate require surgery.

If the soft palate is long enough and mobile enough, no surgery is necessary. If, however, there is sufficient reason to believe it isn't, surgery will be needed.

Those reasons include nasal regurgitation of food and liquids, ear infections, and poor weight gain from the struggle to suck well enough to feed adequately.

I recommend seeing a speech pathologist for a velar (soft palate) examination to see if there is adequate movement.

there was a little girl at the daycare I worked for who had a clef palate. She had surgery at three months. She recovered well and was back at day care within a few days. GOOD Luck to you!