As a feisty 16-year-old, Cassi van den Dungen earned the runner-up title on Australia’s Next Top Model — and notoriety after turning down a New York modelling contract. Three years on, Cassi talks for the first time about the arrival of her son, Drake, and why his cleft palate doesn’t make him any less perfect.
Like most new mums, Cassi was both elated and exhausted when she held her newborn for the first time.
It had been a tough labour — more than 12 hours of nausea-inducing contractions — but as she studied her little miracle minutes after his birth last September, Bob Marley’s beautiful song Is This Love began softly playing in her head.
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Tiny Drake had inherited Cassi’s crooked second toe, but otherwise looked just like his dad, with a head of bouffant black hair. “I was just amazed,” says Cassi, “at how perfect he was.”
There was no missing her little boy’s cleft lip and palate — Cassi had been expecting it since her 19-week ultrasound — but at that moment it didn’t matter. It never has.
“I love his cleft,” Cassi says. “To me it just makes him that little bit different. He’s had that little bit to go through and his smile is bigger because of it.”
It has been a turbulent three years for Cassi since she entered Australia’s Next Top Model as a naive but headstrong teen and emerged as the reality show’s controversial runner-up.
She took a media drubbing for her smoking, swearing and angry outbursts on set, but the claws really came out when the 16-year-old turned down modelling contracts in Sydney and New York to stay in Melbourne with her much older boyfriend, bricklayer Brad Saul.
For 19-year-old Cassi and her 28-year-old now fiancé, Brad, their son’s arrival has brought hospital visits up to three times a week and the prospect of multiple surgeries in the years to come.
Feeding Drake has been a struggle because the top of his mouth opens directly into his nasal cavity, making it difficult for him to suck.
The plate he has worn since he was three weeks old has helped, but he needs to be watched around the clock to make sure he doesn’t pull it out and gag on it.
Drake’s left ear is also deformed and he has hearing loss in both ears. Yet, despite it all, he sleeps well and rarely cries without a reason. “Me and Brad were shocked at how well he’s coped with everything,” says Cassi.
Brad has given up bricklaying to help care for Drake, but the family is now living on welfare payments in a rented house on Melbourne’s western outskirts.
Drake’s special needs make babysitting tricky, so the couple haven’t had any child-free time together since his birth.
Still, with her ready laugh, Cassi doesn’t seem fazed. As she nuzzles Drake’s head and Brad tenderly strokes him off to sleep, it’s obvious the couple are smitten with the baby boy they affectionately call “Magooba”.
“You see the laughs come from him and it’s like nothing compares,” says Brad.
When Drake was born, she made a conscious decision to keep him out of the spotlight. On her Facebook page, she mentions Drake constantly, but has only posted one photograph — with a pacifier covering his cleft.
Cassi has decided to speak to The Weekly now to raise awareness about cleft lip and palate, a condition she had never heard of before Drake’s diagnosis. (She neither sought nor received payment for this article).
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Many a couple, she says, have terminated their pregnancy after discovering their unborn child has a cleft.
“There’s nothing wrong with him — he’s not disabled or anything — and people abort these children,” she says. “That’s heartbreaking to me. How could you abort such a cute little boy?”
“I wouldn’t change Drake for the world,” she says. “I wouldn’t even take away his cleft because it’s made him that little bit more of who he is. He is just so beautiful.”
For parents whose child has a cleft, contact the Cleft Palate and Lip Society for information and support.
Read more of this story in the April issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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