All smiles
Sue Maughan, 50, from Radlett, is on a mission to get the whole world smiling…
Staring nervously at the monitor, I waited for good news.
My husband Alistair, now 56, and I had found out we were expecting a little boy, and just wanted him to be healthy. Then, the doctor frowned. ‘I’m sorry, but your baby has a cleft palate,’ he said.
It was a split in the roof of the mouth caused by tissue not fusing together properly while in the womb.
It was a complete shock – the pregnancy had been completely normal.
There was nothing doctors could do until our baby was born, and Alistair and I were sent home.
‘He’ll be OK, won’t he?’ I asked, tears in my eyes.
‘Of course he will,’ Alistair replied.
A few weeks later, a 3D scan revealed that our boy only had a split in his lip – not his palate.
His case didn’t seem too bad, which came as a relief.
But when Daniel was born in October 2007 at Watford General Hospital, it seemed the doctors had been wrong.
His lip was split in two places, and he also had a split palate.
Holding him in my arms, I looked past all that. ‘He has such beautiful eyes,’ I said through happy tears. Daniel would have to wait until he was three months old to have corrective surgery, and in the meantime, we had to feed him using a specialist bottle.
Bringing him home the next day, it took a lot of getting used to.
Is this my fault? I’d wonder. While waiting for his surgery, we got in touch with Smile Train, the international children’s cleft charity.
They helped us out so much with support and advice and assured me Daniel’s cleft was not my fault.
Despite his cleft, Daniel was a happy little baby.
But there were tough times.
Whenever I took him out in his buggy, people would rush over, excited to get a glimpse of an adorable newborn.
‘Oh’ they’d say when they saw him, a look of horror on their faces. It broke my heart, but I knew Daniel would get help soon.
At three months old, in January 2008, he smiled for the very first time, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
He smiled with his eyes, and it was magical.
That same month, Daniel had corrective surgery at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Doctors repaired the splits in his lip and inserted a block to support his nose.
Three months later, he had a second surgery to have his palate repaired.
Daniel was a star – he recovered quickly, and after that, feeding wasn’t a problem at all.
My brave boy had battled through it, and after that, he came on leaps and bounds, growing into a happy child.
I was so grateful to the doctors who helped him. ‘I want to give something back,’ I told Alistair. So,o, So, in 2012, after gruelling training, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Smile Train. T The following year, I went back to Tanzania on an organised trip with the charity. There, I met patients with cleft palates.
But they were not newborn babies – they were children, teenagers, even adults, who’d never had the corrective surgery. Smile Train had arranged for surgeons to go out there, and I was lucky to be allowed to watch them operate, changing people’s lives in just a few hours.
I’ve since been back to Tanzania four times.
I always ask for donations, and use the money to buy essential medical supplies to take out there.
We’re very lucky that in this country, we don’t see many untreated palates.
But it’s very different in other parts of the world.
Now I want to raise awareness about clefts and babies in other countries who are not as fortunate. Daniel is 12 now and the scar on his lip is barely visible. He still has the same gorgeous smile he had as a baby, and I want to get other kids out there smiling, too.
Was it all my fault?