You're lucky to have access to cleft groups etc. Cleftpals is pretty much non functioning in SA. In hospital when he was born the midwives finally tracked someone down who was vaguely linked to them who took our details and said they'd contact us and send us some info etc but we never heard from them again.
I'm sure your surgeon is excellent, it just was interesting to me that they do things so differently. Stephens cleft palate is pretty wide so even though he does well with the squeeze bottles, he wouldn't be able to suck hard enough to use a normal bottle. Our surgeon actually just got an OAM this year becaue he donates his time every year to go over to Indonesia and East Timor and repair as many clefts as he can free of charge. So he does people of all different ages becaue they just don't have the money and facilities to do it. He has some amazing stories of his work over there and some fascinating photos of before and after photos there.

I think you're lucky to not have to do the palate till he's a bit older. It's a little easier to explain what is going on to an older child. I'm dreading the palate op so much, I hear it's pretty brutal on the kids. We really hope he's over it and back to his normal slef by christmas.
With Stephen I think his speech would be too affected if they waited too long cause it is so wide. Even though he vocalises really well so far.
Anyway hope you had a good day with your functions. We don't have anything