Our Beginning

We found out we were pregnant really early, 3 weeks. We hadn’t planned or prevented and we were somewhat surprised. We had a lot of new things going on in our lives at the time. We had just moved across the country, just gotten married, and were living at my mother's house until we could figure out our next step. The initial plan was to stay in Utah for a while then to move back to the east coast, and THEN start a family. But obviously little Claire had other ideas.

We decided that staying here in Utah was probably our safest, best bet. I have all my family here in one small town and really wanted Claire to grow up with the closeness and security that having your family so close provides. Convincing my husband wasn’t easy, but nothing in life ever is! Once we decided to stay here in Utah we began house hunting. We found our home very quickly, and began the remodel. Right around this time, December 16th 2011 to be exact, I had made an appointment for an ultrasound at a place that will do gender determination early. My mom spends a lot of her time in Africa with my step dad for his work and she was getting ready to head back and wanted to know the sex of our little peanut before she left. Okay, I was a little impatient to!

We were all so excited to get to find out what we were having. I was determined we were having a boy, but most everyone else was saying girl. Well, 3 little dots on the screen proved me wrong and told us we were having ourselves a little baby Claire. We had already chosen names at this point. I am an extreme planner and must plan every detail of everything. That's why when I noticed that her lips were extra pouty in the ultrasound pictures. I immediately started researching cleft lip and palate. My dad was actually born with a cleft lip. So, my brothers and I all knew we could possibly have a baby that would be born with one as well.

I was very vigilant about trying to find out as much as I could. From feeding to actual procedures, any information I could get my hands on. There were some websites about these 2 subjects but I couldn’t find a whole lot about day to day struggles, emotional hurdles, and personal acceptance.

Luckily I have an amazing mother who pushed me to reach out to other mothers in the community who had been through the same thing. Oddly enough in our small corner of Utah there have been quite a few cases. I was lucky enough to have 2 great mothers to answer my million questions and I couldn’t be more grateful to them or my mom for pushing me to reach out to them.

Now, we have our beautiful little Claire and after a very tough stay in the hospital and a bittersweet week at home I have realized that there should be more resources for mothers and families in general who are going through this. I know that having a child with cleft lip or palate isn’t the end of the world, and it’s something that is easily fixed, just check out most of the other pages, blogs and literature on the subject, that’s what they all tell you. But my blog, Claire's Wide Smile is going to let you travel through our experience, beginning to end, good and bad. I can’t begin to explain the relief I felt when I would talk to the other mothers and hear REAL stories not medical mumbo jumbo that you can find anywhere. I needed so desperately be able to organize my emotions the way I did appointments. I felt out of control. At first I felt so alone with all of these crazy emotions and thoughts. After talking with these two I realized not only that I wasn’t alone, but that I wasn’t crazy!