I cannot begin to thank you guys for starting this support group, I had tears in my eyes just reading all the messages everyone put up. I have a little baby girl who's 7 week old, Taylor who was born with a cleft palate. When she was born, I had 3 tramuatising days in the hospital when she was first born, trying to breastfeed her unsuccessfully, on the 3rd day after she still had no food I got in touch with a breastfeeding specialist who picked up on her cleft...surprisingly not one midwife or Dr picked it up and would not let me bottlefeed her until Taylor was finally diagnosed with a cleft. I found out on the 3rd day and I can say unfortunately it was the worst day of my life to date. She had failed her hearing screening on day one and passed on day 3, I have a moderate to severe hearing loss and wear hearing aids, my whole life I prayed I would never have children with a disability and I was so paranoid that she would be born deaf that I cried when they said she failed her hearing test on day one so the night before I kept praying she would pass her screening on day 3 that when she did I was crying with joy that she was okay and she could hear....10 minutes later I was told she had a cleft palate...the waterworks came on again.....it was such a horrible day, I was so scared and upset....I had a bad childhood with my disability & being treated so badly that I never wanted any thing like that to happen to her...once I was told of her condition, in came all the doctors and gave me so much information & talked about operations and feeding equipment I found it so hard to not cry, also not being able to hear as well made me more upset as I couldn't hear half of what was being said. I brought her home and I struggled with the pigeon teat, my arm got so sore from squeezing so hard...she couldn't suck very well unless I squeezed the bottle really hard. Eventually when I had a completely useless arm I contacted a speech pathologist and begged her to help me find another way of feeding as my arm was so painful, I no longer had strength left. She found a teat called the chu chu easy feed teat which was a miracle for me, it worked amazingly for her and what used to be a 2 hour feed was now a 15-40min feed...I started to cope a lot better & stopped feeling as emotional as I could feed her properly & was finally gaining some weight. It has been hard but I'm definately coping a lot better & I feel so thankful that she can hear, she can see and can walk and have felt a bit guilty for being so emotional over it....I do get upset from time to time when I think about her having an operation, and worry that her speech may not be clear...I have hope though, and reading your messages comfort me so much knowing that I'm not the only one who is feeling this...sorry for the long post but I just got emotional when I read all the messages...I have so much more to say but I'll stop for now