The correct breastfeeding position should be towards the side of normal development, never towards the cleft side, so as to avoid grinding the cleft palate or nasal mucosa causing pain and thus interfering with feeding. The mother should keep the child at 45 degrees and feed face to face. Do not lie flat to avoid milk flowing into the nasal cavity or choking. To avoid rubbing the cleft palate and to help with sucking, a palate guard may be worn for feeding. Children tend to swallow a lot of air during feeding, so they need to be fed in small portions. During pauses in between, pat the back to help burp the milk to avoid spitting up. The patting method can be done by placing the child on your shoulder or holding him/her straight in your lap, holding him/her by the armpit with one hand, fixing the head so that the head is tilted sideways while the body is leaning forward, and then patting the back to help burping. Each feeding should take no more than half an hour. If it takes longer than that, the child is trying too hard to suck the milk. If there is a problem with feeding, you should consult your healthcare provider. It is normal for milk to flow back out of the nose during feeding. There is no need to be too alarmed, just stop feeding temporarily and resume feeding after the child coughs or sneezes. After feeding, you can let your child sleep prone or on the right side, mainly to help digestion, and to prevent inadvertent choking when the milk overflows. In addition to giving boiled water after feeding, you can also use a cotton swab with boiled water to clean the nostrils, palate, tongue and dental cavity. Unilateral cleft lip and palate babies can be breastfed on the normal side because the nipple can be positioned between the baby’s normal lip and alveolar process. However, in most cases, bottle feeding is the most acceptable. Bottle feeding is not difficult if attention is paid to the correct way of feeding, without the use of special appliances. Bottle feeding relies on the infant’s ability to close between the lips and the pacifier, as well as the space inside the mouth for tongue movement when allowing liquids to flow out. Infants with cleft palate usually do not have dysphagia or other swallowing problems, but other neurological problems should be excluded. Infants with cleft palate have an impaired ability to generate negative pressure in the mouth, which is a major cause of feeding difficulties. However, if attention is paid to the infant’s posture, the position of the pacifier, the opening of the pacifier, and the method of removing air from the stomach, feeding is also likely to be successful. Correct posture for bottle feeding 1. The mother should keep the child at 45 degrees, not lying flat, to avoid milk flowing into the nasal cavity or being choked. The infant should be in a relatively vertical position, which allows the infant to swallow while relying on gravity to make the milk flow downward. The infant is positioned in the mother’s bent arms or on her knees so that the infant is fed face-to-face with the mother. This is conducive to mother-child communication. 2. The correct breastfeeding position should be toward the side of normal development, not toward the cleft side, so as to avoid abrasion of the mucous membrane at the cleft or the nasal surface, causing pain and interfering with feeding. 3. Use a soft (you can also boil a normal pacifier a few times to make it softer) standard size pacifier to help with the milk extraction. To reduce the pressure of sucking out of the pacifier, use a razor blade or scissors to make a cross on the pacifier hole, the size of the mouth to be able to drip out when inverted. The size of the pacifier hole should be such that it can be turned upside down with a single drop. 4. The pacifier should be placed on normal tissue rather than at the cleft so that the infant can press out the milk with the tongue and avoid the pacifier entering the nasal cavity. For infants with wide bilateral cleft lip and palate, the pacifier can be placed between the cheek and the alveolar process. This helps the infant to press out the fluid rather than inhaling it under negative pressure. 5. To avoid rubbing the cleft palate and to help with sucking, a palatal shield can be worn for feeding. 6.The child tends to swallow a lot of air during feeding, so feeding needs to be divided. When pausing in the middle of a feeding, pat the back to help burp to avoid spitting up the milk. The patting method can be done by placing the child on your shoulder or holding him/her straight in your lap, holding him/her by the armpit with one hand, fixing the head so that the head is tilted sideways while the body is tilted forward, and then patting the back to help burping. 7. Each feeding should take no more than half an hour. If it takes longer than that, it means that the child is trying too hard to suck the milk. There may be problems with the feeding method, so consult your healthcare provider and make improvements. 8. When breastfeeding, sometimes milk will flow back out from the nose. This is a normal phenomenon and there is no need to be too alarmed, just stop breastfeeding temporarily and continue feeding after the child coughs or sneezes. 9. Feeding is the process of developing affection and bonding communication between mother and baby. In the process of feeding, the mother can rap or tease her child. Feeding is the basis for providing closer contact and emotional communication between the feeder and the baby. Feeding by placing the bottle on a pillow and letting the baby drink the milk by itself is never advisable because it is merely feeding, not nurturing. Patting the back to help burping Amusing and playing 10. After feeding, the child can be put to sleep prone or on the right side, mainly to aid digestion and to prevent inadvertent choking when the milk spills. 11.After feeding, in addition to giving boiled water again, you can also use a cotton swab with water to clean the nostrils, palate, tongue and teeth bed.