by samjune79 » Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:11 pm
Hi, I'm a new parent. My son, Kyle, was born in January. He was born with bi lateral cleft lip & bi palate. I was also born with wide cleft lip/palate. I remember when I was younger all the surgeries and people visiting me. One of the things that really bothered me was how people would come up to me even at 10+ years after all my surgeries and say how good of a job the doctors did. This really hurt my feelings and I was really sad that they would say how much better I look (like I was totally ugly before). My son just had his lip repair April 2nd and is doing really well, but I am re-living all the wow's that people say. I know they are just being polite, and my son is only 3 months old and he will not have as many surgeries as I will, but I don't want him to be told by people when he is 5 or 8 years old that the doctors did a really good job. I really understand new saying that to him, but how do I tell my family and close friends to move on. So, my question is, what do you say without being rude or hurting your family’s feelings; mostly my mom. She insist on showing off pictures of Kyle's before and after (to be honest, she only took a few pictures of me when I was a baby and she hid them from everyone and gave them to me when I was old enough, so I kind of think she was ashamed and wants to make up for that in Kyle). Thank you for reading.