Owwwww :( Bottom braces on...

If there were a pill I could take that would knock me out for the next 18 months - 2 years I would take it in heartbeat! Bottom braces are on and OUCH! :( The appointment took about an hour in total and was actually quite painful. Not so much putting the bottom braces on but changing the wire on the top was excruciating. The orthodontist decided that it was time to start pulling the teeth together so he got his tech to tie my two front teeth together with some clear rubber string. I could literally feel them moving when she was pulling and tieing the string. They also ended up putting a heavier gauged wire on this month which apparently is 3x the size of the original one. The pain right now though on the top compared to the bottom doesn't come close. The reason it is so painful is because of the overcrowding between the front 3 bottom teeth. Two of the teeth have pushed the third one behind so they have put a spring between the two outside teeth. This will push them apart in order to make room for the one behind to fall in line. I was surprised however that I did not have to wear any spacers in the bottom molars and that they do not use the caps for the bottoms like they did for the top. They do my molars with silver brackets and the smaller front ones with clear brackets. Not by choice he just did it that way for his own reasoning I guess.

The spring in the front is kind of shaped outward like a half moon and once there is more room it will straighten out. But because of this half moon, it is digging into my bottom lip whenever I move it. This makes talking, eating, drinking almost literally anything painful! I put wax on it and that at least stops the pinching but the damage was already done the first hour after it was on.  I go back now in 6 weeks and we'll see how much progress I can make by then.  For now, I'd love to go into hibernation if I could. Not only because of the pain but because I am so done with this winter already!

Here are a couple pictures: Check out the pictures I took yesterday of the space between the front teeth and then this one! They literally were tied closer this afternoon. So crazy!

You can barely see the cross tied front teeth but they are almost touching now. The spring on the bottom and the metal brackets on the molars. Day 1 always sucks!

Day 1 of bottom braces

Week 5 of Top Braces - Bottoms on tomorrow

I have actually made it 5 weeks with top braces and overall that time went pretty darn fast. I am however not looking forward to adding more metal to my mouth tomorrow when the bottom ones go on but I know it's another step in going through this process. There has been a lot of movement for the top teeth the last two weeks. The wire is poking through the right side bracket at the back of my molar pretty far now. Sometimes wax doesn't like to stick so the wire goes into my cheek regardless. I was going to go in last week to get them to cut it off but just couldn't find time. My family and I have also been fighting a nasty cold this last week and when you have all this metal in your mouth, lets just say its not very fun when you need to cough anything out. I am however VERY thankful that I have managed not to get sick with any type of cold since my surgery back on December 12th. I have to say that's pretty darn good!

My daily routine for cleaning these things have been that I need to brush right after I eat anything and then at night before bed I brush, use the small cone headed brush to get between the brackets, then floss, then waterpik the rest that got missed and clean out the expander. Once that's done, Listerine rinse and off to bed. The whole process take at least 15 minutes and now I am going to have to add on another 5 - 10 minutes for the bottoms to get cleaned. Fantastic! As if it's not hard enough to get my kids to bed at a decent time! Anyways, I have to keep reminding myself I will get used to it and it's only for a short couple years.

I have taken some updated pictures and will make sure to update you on how the process goes for the application of the bottoms tomorrow. Not looking forward to it at all but here goes nothing...

5 weeks with top braces

Top view of my pallat 5 weeks after top braces - Amazing difference

Top view of my pallat before surgery and braces - You can see in the little flappy part in the middle of my gums how much was expanded in the picture before. Crazy!

View of bottom teeth the day before bottom braces go on