Writing in  the New York Times Motherlode blog, Meera Oliva says she was devastated when she learned prenatally that the child she was carrying had a cleft lip, but her concerns disappeared as soon as her son, Elan, was born. Now that Elan is six months old and about to undergo his third surgery, Oliva says she and her husband feel their journey “has enriched our lives much more than it has taken anything away.” An excerpt:

… From the moment we saw Elan, we were absolutely in love with him, and with his cleft in particular, and suddenly all of the things to come like surgeries and arm restraints and special feeding bottles seemed much more manageable.

… I think the most shocking thing of all to both of us is how bittersweet it feels to have Elan’s lip fixed. To us, his face doesn’t need any fixing. His smile is so sweet and part of what makes it so cute is its imperfection. His cleft feels like a part of who he is, and yet if Dr. Mulliken does his job right, Elan will grow up and never feel like his cleft defines him, and I guess that’s the way it should be.

But its hard to imagine that now. Because for now we feel a little sad to be saying goodbye to this wide smile that we have loved so much these last six months. So we will make sure to enjoy it as much as we can the next few days, and then we’ll get to work on loving his new smile just as much. I’m guessing that won’t be too hard.

From the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, ABC News:

California’s two U.S. senators are seeking to halt the expansion of the state’s largest toxic waste dump pending the completion of an investigation into birth defects in a nearby community of farm workers.

The announcement came shortly after state public health officials said they found no evidence of a common cause behind a number of cases of birth defects, infant deaths and miscarriages reported in Kettleman City over the past couple of years.

Previous post here.

From the Fresno [CA] Bee:

Environmental activists say chemical contamination of air and water have caused a cluster of birth defects in a small town in Kings County, CA. They are seeking a moratorium on industrial development in Kettleman City, where they say five babies were born with birth defects between September 2007 and November 2008. Three of the children have since died.

The county’s Department of Public Health released a statement saying a cluster of birth defects “may exist” in Kettleman City, but the cause is unknown. The San Francisco-based Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice asked for a county investigation.

See also:

Toxic neighbors? KMPH, Fox 26

Protest in Kettleman City — KMPH, Fox 26

From Time magazine, Associated Press:

A new study suggests that women have a harder time than men looking at babies with visible disabilities.

In the study by psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and published on online journal PloS One, 27 men and women were shown photos of babies, including some of babies with distinct facial irregularities such as a cleft palate, Down syndrome, or crossed eyes. Participants rated each baby’s attractiveness on a number scale and pressed keys to make the photo stay on the screen longer or disappear faster.

Even though the men and women gave the babies similar attractiveness ratings, the women clicked keys 2.5 times more than men to make photos of babies with disabilities disappear.

“They had this subliminal motivation to get rid of the faces,” said [lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman], who questions whether “we’re designed by nature to invest all the resources into healthy-looking kids.”

Elman questioned whether the finding might challenge the concept of unconditional maternal love.

From BBC, UK Times, People Magazine, Hindustan Times:

The story of an Indian girl whose cleft lip was repaired through surgery has won the Academy Award for best short documentary.

Directed by Megan Mylan, the film follows Pinki’s transformation from an introverted social outcast to an outgoing local celebrity after an operation funded by The Smile Train, an international charity organization that provides free surgery to children with cleft lips and palates.

Pinki, who attended the awards ceremony with her father and her surgeon, told People magazine that she had been shunned by children and townspeople in her rural village in India. Pinki’s birth had been a humiliation on her family, and villagers said her cleft lip was evidence of a curse.

Her father, Rajendra Sonkar, said he used to think it would have been better if his daughter had not been born. Now he hopes Pinki will grow up to be a flight attendant.

(Pinki with surgeon Subodh Kumar Singh, her father, and director Megan Mylan, AP photo from UK Times)

From the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and elsewhere:

Babies conceived with the help of medical technology are two to four times more likely to have certain types of birth defects than children conceived naturally, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Human Reproduction.

The report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found an elevated risk of heart defects, cleft lips and gastrointestinal defects.

Scientists emphasized that the problems were not lethal and that the individual risk of birth defects is small. For example, the risk of a baby in the United States being born with a cleft lip or without a palate is about 1 in 950, but the study found that the risk is 1 in 425 for babies conceived through infertility treatments.

About one percent of all births in the United States now occur with the help of infertility treatments, or double the rate recorded in 1996.

From the Scotsman:

Conservative Member of Parliament Nadine Dorries is pushing for a measure that would specifically prohibit abortions for club foot and cleft palate.

The UK’s Abortion Act says that an abortion may be carried out if the child “would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be serious handicapped,” but does not define what a “serious handicap” is.

About 40 babies were aborted in the UK between 1996 and 2006 because they had either club foot or cleft palate, mostly after 24 weeks, according to a recent report.

“I don’t classify either cleft palate or club foot as serious disabilities when they are easily correctable,” said Dorries. “I think most members of the public would say aborting babies for these reasons late in pregnancy is wrong.”

She said she did not back the idea of extending such a ban to other disabilities, such as Down syndrome.