Cleft Palate

This picture was taken from the following website:
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20173.aspx

This past Sunday, September 12, I had the unfortunate task of attending the funeral of a close family friend. While it was slightly expected, death always seems to come at an unfortunate time, and it proved very hard for all the close family members. One of the people who spoke had an especially hard time. This was partly due to the fact that he had been given the task of speaking at his friend's funeral, however, the tears shed did not help. As he continued to speak, however, it was noticeable why he had such a hard time speaking, as well as why it was so hard to understand him. He had a cleft palate. This led to his slight speech impediment, as well as resulting in the slight difficulty others had when understanding him. After some research, I found the following information.

"We all start out life with a cleft lip and palate. During normal fetal development between the 6th and 11th weeks of pregnancy, the clefts in the lip and palate fuse together. In babies born with cleft lip or cleft palate, one or both of these splits failed to fuse." A cleft palate is a split or separation in the oral cavity. This is one of the most common birth defects, and affects about one in 1,000 babies. Children born with this disorder have struggles with eating, breathing and speaking. The cause of this anomaly is unknown, although genes and environment are suspected precursors. Surgeries provide the best results for treating clefts, however complications may be lifelong, such as they were in my encounter.

More than anything else, my eyes were opened to the social detriments birth defects can cause, even at the mature adult stage. At the funeral, even after this person had become an adult, it was apparent to the audience that something was wrong. It is hard to comprehend how such a small abnormality, that doesn't even have a known cause yet, can cause so much potential damage. Birth defects, in particular, are hard for me to understand because babies have done nothing to deserve them. We should be in constant appreciation of the fact that God has truly created our bodies more intricately than we will ever know.

The information in the second paragraph was taken from the following website: http://www.entnet.org/HealthInformation/cleftLipPalate.cfm.