Hi, Thanks for writing in to us. God bless your child. Cleft palate is the most common birth defect that occurs. It happens in about 1 in 700 births. It is not a fatal problem. Most children born with clefts do well in developed countries. They may have difficulties with feeding initially, but with proper guidance, parents learn to feed their child with a cleft, and the child learns to compensate for the cleft during the first months after birth. Clefts are repaired within the first year of life, usually by a surgeon who has extensive experience and training with this disorder. The clefts are repaired in part to facilitate feeding, but most importantly to support normal speech. Usually babies with this problem do learn to feed orally. It is generally true that an interdisciplinary team best manages children with clefts of any sort. I would advocate that as a first step towards challenges ahead for your family. Most importantly early on is to treat the child as you would any other child, meaning talk to the child, expose the child to lots of good language. That is necessary for all of us to learn speech normally. Then, by the time your child is a year old, he or she will begin to produce their first words, and an evaluation by a speech pathologist is indicated. In fact, it is a good idea to see a speech pathologist earlier than that, such as during the months when the child is beginning to babble. Once that begins to happen, we can get an idea about whether the cleft is affecting the child s speech. It is important to note that only between 20 and 30 percent of children born with clefts of the palate have speech problems requiring secondary surgery after the palate is repaired. The remaining 70 to 80 percent develop speech normally. Hope this helps