Life with my boys.: 1 in 20,000

A month ago when we found out the reason behind Owen’s choking was a Laryngeal Cleft we were shocked. For the previous sixteen months we had always assumed that Owen’s choking had more to do with the reflux desensitizing his throat and causing a delayed swallow rather than it being a secondary problem. So for it to be a completely separate condition was a shock, the fact it was a rare condition was even more shocking. One in twenty thousand babies are born with a laryngeal cleft. We are lucky he was born with a type one. It is the least severe and the easiest to correct. And as scary as it was to hear he needed surgery and that this condition was not something he would outgrow there was that part of us that was relieved to know that there was an end in sight to Owen's choking and that there was a fix.

On March 12^th Owen was admitted at UCSF Children’s hospital where he underwent an endoscopic repair of the laryngeal cleft and an endoscopy (to check on the reflux). The surgery went better than we could imagine and after one night in the PICU he was ready to head to home. He is doing so well now and although it will be some time before we know if the surgery itself was a success we are happy to have the surgery behind us. It has been a week since Owen went through the surgery and each day he gets better and better. Hopefully by the time his little brother arrives we will know it was a success and all those fears will be a thing of the past!