4 months and 1 week in

Hello! Here to share a few updates. Things in the braces world are going okay I guess. I don't know why but my self esteem is taking a huge blow from my braces lately. I'm just sick of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing pure metal. Oh well things will be better one day, just not today! I went in for my routine cleaning and got some bad news, I have not one BUT three cavities that need to be filled. Ugh I have spent so much on these teeth in the past half year that it's just a bit much. Plus I'm not happy about having to go through the cavity filling process. I just had one filled earlier this year.

I had a wire adjustment earlier this month as well on my top teeth. My ortho didn't want to do a wire change on the bottom teeth because he felt the wire that was on was doing a great enough job. So he left that one until next time. I did ask about the TADS because he had said when we first met that he would probably use those. He will put those on sometime in November. Those will be on mainly for the extraction holes, as you can see they still aren't closed :( He also mentioned something called a Gingivectomy to me, for my short teeth. I made the word a link to a youtube video that shows what it is. Basically I have short teeth and this should help with that. I also have a gummy smile it would be nice if it could help that as well. The other option was Lumineers on the four top teeth. So this was some exciting news to hear. I'm so excited for the results. I can see a major difference in my bottom teeth already. My top teeth I can't really say that I notice a change. But I probably won't until those TADS are places. I would think it would help out significantly with my overbite. Here are the latest pics taken today. Thanks for reading!

Sadly still absolutely zero change in the gaps :(

The only major change so far

Hello

So 3 months in so far!! I can say that I'm finally starting to see some change. Mostly on my lower teeth more than anything, I can feel it too. One of my bottom teeth was especially sore today. Kind of a dull ache, and whenever I took a bite of something it was that much more painful. Good sign I guess though. I took a pic tonight of the progress that I have noticed. FYI my iphone makes my teeth look super yellow, so sad :( so be prepared.

So, you can see here that the tooth that the arrow is pointed to is the one that has been super sore, and you can see how much it has shifted. I can't wait until they are all straight. It actually seems like a possibility now. It's exciting to finally notice some change by myself!! :)

July! 2.5 months later

So I have almost had my braces on for 3 months, July 20th will be three months exactly. These past two and a half months have actually gone by really fast so I'm hoping the rest of the time goes by just as fast. I saw my orthodontist last Wednesday on June 29th and he said everything is looking great. I told him I hadn't noticed much movement on my bottom teeth and he told me he can tell a big difference, and to prove that he showed me the pictures from the day I had my moldings and everything done. And I guess I agree with him a little, there is a small amount of change. Not enough to excited about though haha. He did say 18-20 months sounds about right which is awesome. I will take 18 months over 24 months. So we will see.

They didn't end up doing a wire change because he said that if they try and move things too fast it might just have a bed effect and mess everything that has been done so far. So in 6 weeks I go back in and he said most likely a wire change on the top teeth and maybe leave the same wire on the bottom if it's doing what it needs to be doing. They shaved some of that blue stuff off my teeth because my teeth were no longer biting down on the brackets, but that's basically all that happened at my last appt.

I took some pics will post them in a bit. Excuse the bits of food in my teeth, should have flossed before I took pics just forgot. :(

Pics!

Here are the most recent pictures that I took today. There really isn't much change, at least not that I notice anyway.

Wow I don't usually blog and now I know why, it's extremely time consuming. Anyhow i just wanted to start sharing my braces story with others. I know that I have been extremely inspired by reading other peoples stories. So I'm hoping someone can be encouraged by mine. I have needed braces since I was 10-11 years old. I just never ended up getting them. My parents had insurance, so it's not like it was out of the question to get them. I noticed they got worse as I got into my early twenties. All I can guess what that is from is my wisdom teeth coming in and pushing the two front teeth out that much more. My teeth have always bothered me, but once that happened I disliked them that much more. So here I am at 26 years of age just now getting braces. Better late than never I guess. I had my braces put on April 20th and 4 pre-molars extracted on May 20th. My estimated time in braces is 18-24 months, which seems to be the norm.

Everything has been going well so far. I did get two dry sockets with my lower extractions. That was a difficult couple of weeks. But other than that everything has been pretty easy. Some aching here and there. All I can guess is that my teeth are shifting. I have a wire adjustment on the 29th of this month. I've heard it's a little painful after those, so hopefully I can get through that. Getting the braces was a big blow in my self esteem, especially because I'm doing the all metal. But after two weeks of having them on I quickly got over it. I have a had a few people comment on my braces, always nice things to say. I did have one person say I looked cute and like I was 15. I just took it as a compliment. :)

As far as eating goes things have been okay. The first week was definitely the hardest. I was worried I wasn't going to be able to eat anything again. That might also be because the second day after getting my braces on my wire popped out. So the next time I went back to my Ortho's office he twisted them so that they wouldn't come out at the slightest tugging. So that has given me a lot more freedom to eat more things. Which is nice because next to sleep eating is one of my favorite things.

I will post pics soon. It's been almost 2 months on the 20th that I've been in braces and I don't see any change. So no need in taking any pics tonight. Also keep in mind that I''m not very good at proper punctuation and I'm sure there are a gazillion typos in this post alone. So please don't take this too seriously. I'm not perfect! :)