Samantha Hanratty Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for ELLE
Pregnant Yellowjackets star Samantha Hanratty is preparing for her first child, a baby boy, to have cleft lip surgery shortly after he’s born.
“My baby is going to be born with a cleft lip. We’re not 100 percent sure, and we probably won’t know 100 percent until he’s born, whether he has the palate,” Hanratty, 29, said in a Friday, December 13, TikTok video for Babylist. “His goes all the way up to the nose.”
Hanratty and her husband, Christian DeAnda, announced in August that they are expecting a baby. The couple later found out that the fetus has a cleft lip. According to the Mayo Clinic, a cleft lip occurs when the upper lip hasn’t completely formed before birth.
Hanratty and DeAnda’s son will need to undergo a series of procedures to correct the birth defect.
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“At three weeks old, he’ll get his first surgery, where they’re gonna close that up,” Hanratty told Babylist. “One thing that we’ve been really keeping in mind is our language around it. There’s nothing that’s being fixed, there’s nothing that’s bad about it. It’s just open right now and he’s gonna have a really big smile and we’re gonna close and it’s gonna be a little bit smaller of a smile.”
Hanratty also acknowledged the potential “difficulties” that could arise from her baby’s cleft lip and resulting surgery.
“I probably won’t be able to breast-feed,” she explained. “We’re gonna have special bottles for him and, then, there’s just a lot more surgeries to come depending on the severity of where it is in the palate, if it is in the palate.”
Hanratty further noted that “there are definitely moments that [she] definitely” feels sadness, but overall she’s “just really happy to be his mom.”
Samantha Hanratty Courtesy of Samantha Hanratty/Instagram
The actress added that she felt her son kicking in that moment, which he frequently does whenever she mentions his cleft.
“One time, my husband and I were crying about it in bed and [he] went to go lay on my stomach, and he kicked my husband so hard,” Hanratty recalled. “[Christian] was like, ‘OK, dude. It’s fine, I get it.’ You’re gonna be fine.’ So, he’s letting us know that there’s nothing to worry about.”
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Hanratty first confirmed in a September TikTok video that her son would be born with a cleft lip.
“At first the news was obviously shocking because it doesn’t run in my family, it doesn’t run in my husband’s family,” Hanratty said at the time. “The biggest thing that we all want is that we want our kids to be happy and we want our kids to be healthy. … I think that both me and my husband are at peace with the fact that we know that he’s going to be OK.”
