Complications

Today we had to face the first significant complication since Natalie was born. The doctors have realised that Natalie has a slight cleft palate. It had not been noticed before because it is so slight, but suspicions were raised when Natalie was being fed by mouth yesterday and the milk was coming back out of her nose. What this means for Natalie right now is that she can’t seal off the airway between her nose passage and her throat, so she can’t get any suction when trying to breast or bottle feed. Therefore she gets tired out trying to feed without getting enough milk. This helped explain why Mum was having trouble establishing breast feeding, although Natalie is still only just reaching the stage of development where she was capable of breast feeding anyway. So we will have extra help from a specialist team who will visit us regularly to help us with feeding Natalie. Mum will need to continue expressing breast milk with a pump for as long as Natalie is on liquid feeding, as Natalie will not be able to get enough nutrition from breast feeding alone due to her cleft. Then at around 6 months old, Natalie will need surgery to fix her cleft. Hopefully because it is so slight, that will be the end of her problems with this. To be honest at this stage we are just relieved she has not got any more serious or longer term problems. Natalie is of course completely oblivious to all this, and continues to gain weight and look cute!

Still looking cute!

Natalie tests her grip

Natalie rests on Dad's lap