Bernie, I hope I can give you a little bit of hope & comfort & general info from someone who went thru this. I was born with a cleft palette & lip, & now I'm 36. I had 7 surgeries over the first 18 years of my life correcting it. I think I was 3 months with my first surgery, I'd have to ask my parents what specifically was done, but I think they closed my lip up. Later they closed up my palette to an extent. I do still 2 holes in the roof of my mouth. One right in the middle, & another a lil bit in front of it & to the right. The latter hole is from a tooth that was growing there, & eventually with braces, it was brought up into the front of my mouth with the rest of my teeth.
They didn't want to work on my nose much until I was older, because of the fear of it growing & getting messed up after surgery if they did it too early. So when I was 18, they took some cartilage out of my right hip, & put it in my right nostril & my jaw. Everything came out just fine. My nose isn't 100% perfect, & I do have a minor scar down my lip, but people don't notice either of that unless I point them out, which is good for your kids sake. However, I do believe in grammar school, that I was made fun of a bit, so bare that in mind. I'm sure Dr's are better at fixing the problem nowadays, so maybe she'll get fixed up earlier then me. Growing up, I did have earaches a lot, which may have been from this, but I haven't had any in 20 or more years.
I do believe that part of my ability to mimic sound with my voice or my ear for music might have something slightly to do with the holes in the roof of my mouth, but that's only a theory on my part. I can whistle, but when it comes to speech, I do tend to slurr my words. I went thru some speech therapy growing up, I think it helped. I mainly have problems with using the letter "s". I don't put my tongue in the same place that others do when using words with "s" in them.
That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'll keep thinking of other things related to my lip & palette, if only so you know what to maybe expect in the future. All in all though, I'm very happy with the results of the surgeries. So hang in there dude, I'll see if I can help in a monetary well as well.
