Virginia Smiles Video "A Beautiful Child-Welcoming a Baby with a Cleft Lip and Palate"

Virginia Smiles has developed a video, produced by Blueberry Shoes Productions. The video is presented as a message of hope and encouragement, and an introduction for parents who have just learned that their child has a cleft. "A Beautiful Child" includes interviews of parents who discuss their experiences of first learning about and raising an infant born with a cleft lip and/or cleft palate, and includes the perspective of an adult who was born with a cleft lip. In honest and heartfelt terms, parents of four children talk about the shock of learning about their child's cleft, the concerns and misconceptions they had, and the practicalities of caring for the special needs of their new baby. With good humor and openness, the parents describe how their perspective, understanding, and outlook changed as a result of caring for a child born with a cleft. The 25-minute video includes many photos of the children before and after their surgeries, and features children from four different craniofacial teams of care in Virginia. The video is divided into the following five chapters: · Finding Out · Concerns and Misconceptions · A New Baby · Early Surgeries · A New Perspective