Henry's Forever Smile

Henry’s Shriners Children’s Boston story started before he was born. His mother, Meghann, had an anatomy scan when she was 20 weeks pregnant, revealing her son’s diagnosis: a cleft lip and cleft palate.

“I met with a doctor and she recommended Shriners Children’s Boston for cleft lip and palate care,” said Meghann. The condition, typically diagnosed during an ultrasound, gives doctors a head start in mapping out a care plan.

Facial clefts form in the womb and are the No. 1 craniofacial birth difference treated at Shriners Children’s. A cleft lip forms when the lip does not properly develop, causing a newborn’s smile to split. A cleft palate is the result of tissues on the roof of a child’s mouth not fusing. If the conditions are not fixed, they can affect breathing, speaking, eating and appearance. “Very early in a child’s development, these segments don’t meet up properly and that leads up to these fissures and clefts that we know of as cleft lip and palate,” explained Jay Austen, M.D., a plastic surgeon on the cleft and craniofacial team at Shriners Children’s Boston and chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at MassGeneral Brigham. The Shriners Children’s Boston Cleft and Craniofacial Center is a collaborative program with MassGeneral Hospital for Children.

Patients will receive a comprehensive care plan to meet their clinical and developmental needs. In a single visit, patients have access to plastic surgeons, speech pathologists, orthodontists and dietitians. “You may only need one of us, you may need five of us, you’ll need us at different points in your child’s life, but you know that’s what we’re here for,” said Dr. Austen.

In June 2022, when he was just 4 months old, Henry had his cleft lip repaired, followed by surgery to address his cleft palate the following November.