Follow Up Ultrasound

1 week after our anatomy scan finally came and we had our follow up, level 2 ultrasound to give us more answers about our son's cleft diagnosis. Of course, our lovely neighborhood weather man was predicting a huge snow storm for that day. The weather was the least of my worries for that day. We got the call the night before that our son's school was canceled in anticipation of the snow storm which was the first time in a week that I was nervous about the possibility of my appointment being canceled and having to wait longer. I woke up Thursday morning and called the office as soon as they opened to make sure they were going to be open and they were. It started snowing about 20 minutes before we left and it was really coming down! We started on our drive and the roads were covering quickly. The closer we got to the office, the better the roads got so I figured the storm wasn't going to be so bad.

We got to the office and learned that we were going to be the last appointment for the day because of the weather. We went into the ultrasound room and got things started. After getting the initial measurements and drilling the tech with a million questions that she wasn't qualified to answer, we started looking further into his cleft. We confirmed a unilateral cleft in his upper right lip. The tech tried and tried to get a definitive shot of his palate, but we could only get shots that were "just ok". The tech felt comfortable saying the palate was intact as did the perinatologist but I was still nervous as clefts can go undetected via ultrasound - especially the soft palate since it's not a bony structure.

Despite not having a set-in-stone answer, I felt better and made it through the ultrasound with very few tears. Our drive home was a nightmare because of the snow storm - we had to pull over constantly to clean off the wiper blades and cars were sliding off the road left and right.

After that ultrasound, we were scheduled for monthly ultrasounds to monitor the cleft situation and continue to get a good shot of his palate. At our next ultrasound, we met Karen our care specialist who scheduled and coordinated all of our appointments - she was such a blessing to me. The first thing she said to me was "I want you to know that this is not your fault. There is nothing you could have done to prevent this and we will make it ok." Her words were so kind and genuine - I always looked forward to seeing her at my appointments.

Every ultrasound after that point was very much the same as my first follow up - always "just ok" palate shots but never anything great... until one of our last ultrasounds. The perinatologist came in to do the last part of the ultrasound and our little stinker gave us one glorious picture of his hard palate which looked intact. Despite having our first amazing look at the roof of his mouth, I was still skeptical and couldn't say that his palate was unaffected for fear of letting my hopes get too high.