The Unofficial FAQ To Life With A Cleft Lip And Palate

A little over 40 years ago I was born with a cleft lip and palate. I was just one of every 700 babies to have this facial birth defect. That’s almost as common as Down syndrome. In fact, it’s the fourth most common structural birth defect, period. If we’re limiting stats to just the head and face, it’s the single most common. Yet somehow it appears shrouded in mystery, relegated to conversations nobody has, the dark corners of the internet. I decided to surface some of those questions, mostly the tougher ones because those are the ones that never get the good answers.

And maybe some of these will never have a traditionally “good answer”. Something that often gets forgotten is, in fact, just how diverse cleft lip and palate (CLP) can be. For some it’s just the lip, for others it’s only the palate, for about 50% of people it’s both and within those three major categories, there are virtually infinite variations of severity and associated defects. For a friend of mine’s daughter it comes paired with severe hearing issues and some learning disabilities. Somewhere along the CLP spectrum you also…