Bens forever smile

August 8th 2017 we welcomed our third child Benjamin to the family. We had known since our twenty week ultrasound that he would be born with cleft lip possible cleft palate. I did all the research I could I joined support groups, formed his cleft team, bought specialty feeding bottles and so much more to be ready for Ben. When he was born we found out his palate was indeed affected and so I was not able to breastfeed my son. I exclusively pumped his breastmilk every two to three hours for two months and barely had time for sleep, cleaning,other kids, or friends. I bought supplements, baked lactation foods, bought lactation cookies, power pumped etc you name it I tried it. Sadly it didn’t keep my supply going strong enough to keep up. I gave up finally and started him on similac pro sensitive with immunity support at 33$ a can as getting sick for him is a lot harder than other babies. This is an added expense we had not calculated as I was dead set on breastfeeding him. We went to meet with our cleft team for the first time weeks after his birth and found out that this great new promotion my husband got came with a horrible insurance plan. Since his birth we have had to pay out of pocket for everything for him including 500.00 just to meet his team!! I’m already starting to drown in medical bills and we just got started. Bens first surgery was supposed to be in November but with this new policy even tho I met our deductible they gave us a new one and it’s 3k plus 20% of all bills. Then January 1st we will get a new deductible of 4k$!!!!!!!! So I asked the surgeon if we could please move him to January so I could get two surgeries in the same deductible year. So now instead of 7K we will need to pay 4K deductible and 20 percent of all bills. My family did not want me to do this and everyone that knows me knows this is not easy to write and feel like I am not capable of caring for my kids but I need help. 4K is a lot to come up with by January for anyone these days. Anything will help and we will love and appreciate it all. Thank you for your time and thank you for being there for us.