Cape Town - After a difficult pregnancy with their first child, followed by six miscarriages in four years, including twins born at 26 weeks, Willie and Annerie Pienaar were relieved and delighted when their second daughter was about to be born at term.
As soon as they found out that Annerie was pregnant, Willie advised her to give up her job as a warehouse manager so she could take things easy at home.
The day their daughter, Karli, was born five months ago, the couple was so ready to give her a special welcome that Willie sold his motorbike so his wife could deliver her in a private facility because they didn’t have medical aid.
But to their shock and disappointment, Karli was not the perfect baby they had imagined. She had a cleft lip - a deformity which had not shown up on the 4D scan Annerie had during the pregnancy.
“When I heard from doctors that she had a cleft lip, I didn’t know what to think,” said Annerie. “I think I panicked and I was a bit disappointed…
“I was happy that for the first time I was giving birth at full term and everything with the pregnancy had gone well, but I saw the cleft lip as a negative thing. For me it felt like Karli was broken. I started to think about friends’ babies who had cleft lips… the ordeal they went through and all the operations their babies needed.”
At the weekend the little girl had a life-changing operation at Vincent Pallotti Hospital to close her cleft lip.
The operation, which the hospital performed for free as part of its corporate social responsibility, is thanks to Operation Smile and the Cipla Foundation initiative that performs surgery on children with facial problems.
Through its fund-raising project for the surgeries known as Cipla Miles for Smiles Mad Run, the foundation has been hosting more than seven teams who have been running 37km each day around Table Mountain in the past week.
Karli is one of the seven children who will have corrective surgeries as a result of the fund-raising drive.
Adva Brivik, programme co-ordinator for Operation Smile, said although cleft lip and palate abnormalities were not life-threatening, they caused psychological scars. Surgery on these children went a long way towards addressing this.
“Not only do these children struggle to feed, but because they look different they often get teased, especially by other children. In some cases parents also feel ashamed of them because they are not considered pretty enough. Without surgery they can be discriminated against throughout their lives… even in the job market.”
Through the help of dedicated medical volunteers, who in the past eight years have done more than 220 000 surgical procedures to children in different parts of the world, the organisation has helped bring back smiles.
Brivik said a cleft lip and palate was the fourth most common birth defect - affecting one in every 700 children.
“We need these children not to be hidden behind walls. They need to be smiling just like other children who are considered normal,” she said.
Although the Pienaars were nervous about the baby’s surgery, they had no doubts about going ahead.
“As her parents we’ve become used to her looking the way she does, and we love her, but we know that when she grows up she will be made to feel different. We don’t want her to go through that ordeal. We wanted her to be fixed before she starts going to school and mixing with other children. We want the best for our daughter.”
Cape Argus