The advantages of the mother's milk for the newborn infants are unquestionable. In its impossibility, it is necessary the introduction of the artificial milk and adequate food as an alternative way of replacing nutrients, respecting the child's neurophysiological maturing. For this study, 60 children aged 2 to 4 years old (male and female), carriers of cleft lip and palate, who were patients of the Hospital de Reabilitação de Anomalias Craniofaciais at the Universidade de São Paulo in the city of Bauru, were investigated, considering their earlier dietary history (nursing and nourishing introduction) and present weight and height, in order to verify possible influences on nutritional status related to their feeding in the first year of life. The obtained data showed that the nursing was significant, and that the weaning, the artificial nursing and the nourishing introduction, in spite of inadequate, hardly influenced the current anthropometry.
cleft lip-palate feeding; nutritional status; breast feeding; food introduction; lip; infant
