Hi,

from our own experience, our son was not able to suck normally or use a regular bottle after his lip surgery - the palate needed to be fixed first. Following his palate surgery it took a while for him to get the hang of normal sucking - not so weird if you think about it, it would have been a very weird feeling for him. In theory he should have been able to use a normal bottle following the palate surgery, but the doctors warned us that he would have gotten so used to the Haberman bottle that he probably wouldn't accept a normal bottle - this was the case. However, he did eventually (at about 2) start using a normal bottle, though it did take some coaxing. One bonus was that following the palate surgery, he refused to use his dummy (pacifier) - I guess it just didn't feel right any more.