As a first-time mother, Kristen Duklewski followed the pregnancy books to the letter. But the news that her newborn son, Dylan, had a cleft lip caught her off guard.
“I didn’t know what it meant,” she said. “It wasn’t something I was prepared for.”
The common birth defect quickly took a backseat when he was diagnosed with ventricular septal defect, or a tiny hole in his heart.
Dylan, who was delivered at Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson, had surgery at 3 months old to correct his lip, and dodged open-heart surgery because the hole shrank to the size of a pinhole. He just celebrated his second birthday.
Now, during National Birth Defects Prevention Month, Duklewski wants to encourage other parents to talk with people about having a child with a birth defect.
“It can happen to anybody,” she said.
Each year, one in about 30 babies in the United States is born with a birth defect, which is a functional abnormality that leads to physical or mental disability, according to the March of Dimes. The defects can be caused by genetic or environmental factors or both, but the cause of about 70 percent of birth defects is unknown.
Cleft lip and palate, where the tissues of the mouth or lip don’t form, are among the most common birth defects, and most can be corrected with surgery.
“It’s very fixable,” said Dr. Randolph Capone, co-director of the Greater Baltimore Cleft Lip and Palate Team at GBMC.
Babies with both cleft lip and palate may need up to five surgeries through their lives to fix the gums and nose, he said. There are no known ways to prevent it as there are with some other defects, he said.
In Maryland, 10 babies per 10,000 are born with cleft lip, and four to five babies out of 10,000 have cleft palate, said Dr. Susan Panny, director of the Office for Genetics and Children With Special Health Care Needs at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The number of children born with neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida, have been going down in Maryland and worldwide, as more women are taking folic acid, a supplement shown to prevent these defects, Panny said.
Three in 10,000 Maryland babies have spina bifida, in which the fetal spinal column doesn’t fully close in the first month of pregnancy.
“It used to be about three to five times that,” Panny said.
The incidence of Down syndrome has gone up slightly, mainly because more women over 35 are having babies, which increases the risk of having a child with Down, Panny said.
To help ensure a healthy child, women should take vitamins with folate, avoid exposure to any toxic chemicals or radiation, and know their family history, Panny said.
