Baby Born With Cleft Lip Smiles For The First Time

A baby born with a cleft palate can now smile properly after undergoing life-changing surgery.

Six-month-old Cam Martin spent five hours on the operating table while a plastic surgeon fixed his top lip and gum.

Adorable photos show the youngster beaming widely a few days after the surgery at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Cam, who is a twin, was born on the 3rd April with a cleft palate, which meant his upper lip, the bones of his upper jaw and his gum, were split, unlike his brother Jack.

This meant that Cam was unable to breastfeed and had to be fed through a bottle with a special valve.

After multiple discussions with plastic surgeons, dad Matt, 29, and his wife Sara, 27, were told that Cam would need a series of operations to rebuild his mouth.

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Cam had his operation on the 25th July and a few days after, the swelling went down and the bruising healed. His parents, Matt and Sara, saw Cam smile for the first time with his upper lip.

Matt said: "Sara was changing his diaper and I was watching TV. She started screaming, 'Come in here, he's smiling!'.

"I rushed in. I couldn't believe it. In my darkest moments, I thought I'd never see him smile with a healed top lip but here he was beaming at me."

"It was a full face smile. He was giving the biggest grin he could.

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"Sara and I cried because we were beginning to think we'd never see him smile.

"The beam was in his eyes and in his cheeks. He was saying: 'I'm still here, I'm still the same baby, everything's OK'."

Cam's cleft lip and palate wasn't picked up in any of Sara's scans before the birth, but the couple say they could tell something wasn't right as soon as he was born.

The couple said that when Matt made his way over to Cam after Sara had given birth all of the nurses were huddled together.

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Matt explained that he had never seen anything like his son's face before and that he had no idea what it was until a nurse explained it to him.

The nurses had to work out how Cam was going to eat and breathe but after a few days in intensive care he returned home with his parents.

Cam needs another two operations to rebuild his mouth, so his journey isn't over yet. The first will be when he reaches 18 months and will repair the roof of his mouth.

Then when he is between four and seven-years-old, Cam will have a bone graft to rebuild his gum.

Topics: Life News, Real, Health

Mark Cunliffe

Mark is a writer at LADbible with a creative writing background and a history working at some of Manchester's biggest agencies. He loves football and music that screams a lot.

@mark_cunliffe