Hi,
I am Vickie, mom to Doug age 3, and my (due any minute) baby, Meg and wife to
Gary.  I am resuming my education, I have hopes of eventually becoming a
midwife, I also am wanting to become a LC, and plan to specialize, in a way, to
children with craniofacial anomalies.
My son was born with several problems, including prematurity (32 weeks), a
unilateral cleft lip and alveolar ridge with a notch in the hard palate, a
duplex renal system, he is also being evaluated for something causing chronic
constipation.  Despite all of this, he is a healthy little boy who breastfed
totally for his first several months and was only weaned recently when I became
pregnant with a high risk pregnancy.  I have hopes of getting him back to
breast after my daughter is born, if ath is unsuccessful, I will be pumping and
giving him my milk in a cup.
With all of the difficulties that I encountered as a new mom to a high needs
baby, I am amazed now, that I ever managed to breastfeed.  I got lots of
differing advice, many times opposing advice from people of the same
discipline.  I have also found that there is a very wide range of thought on
nursing the cleft affected child at the breast both before and after surgery.
I have heard horror stories from moms that have children with huge clefts about
being harassed and such for not being able to breastfeed their child, as well.
I was told that I would not be able to breastfeed my son, OTOH, and not to even
bother trying.  I only have to offer my own personal experience with feeding a
child that has a cleft, but hope that may be of some use, and I know that there
is tons that I can learn on the whole subject.  I persuaded my son's plastic
surgeon to not balk about me nursing Doug immediately after his lip
reconstruction, and the subsequent minor revision, but many surgeons adamantly
refuse to go along with nursing at the breast during the initial healing
period.
I am not yet a professional in the field, but am an aspiring professional, I
hope that is enough.  I have had the opportunity to discuss feeding an infant
with a compromised facial structure with some in my area, including some LCs
that want to learn what I did to make it successful and why it was successful
in my opinion, I have also discussed it in depth with my son's plastic surgeon
(he is the head of the cleft team that cares for my son).
Vickie