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