Brace Yourselves

As you can tell from the sporadic posts, it's been a busy summer and a busy start of school.  Those last 2 weeks of summer were packed full.  We tried our hardest to squeeze every drop of summer fun out before the long days of school started.  Our fun included trips to Chattanooga and Atlanta, days spent at the pool and at summer camp, a visit the closest water park, welcoming a new baby cousin into the world, meeting new teachers and the biggest change of them all...

Braces!!

Although my generation didn't get braces until late middle school or high school, the trend these days is to get them as soon as your baby teeth are gone.  Julie lost her last baby tooth a year ago and has been anxiously waiting for the day she would get her braces.  As excited as she was, she didn't anticipate the pain that she would have for the first few days.  Meal times were rough and involved lots of tears.  She was hungry but didn't want to use her teeth to bite into anything.  She didn't believe her mommy that chewing actually made it better until we forced her to chew steak and, surprise, surprise, her teeth felt better.

After about 4 days, she was better and eating was old hat again.  It's hard to see but there are little colored rubber bands around each brace.  Every time she goes to the orthodontist to get them tightened, she gets to pick new colors.  I think she has her colors picked out from now until Easter.  (She started out with orange and white - Go Vols!!)

And just when we were getting over the pain of getting braces, someone else joins in the cry (literally)...

Sorry about the up-the-nose shot.
Its was the only way to get a picture of the appliance.

Turns out David needed hardware too.  The last time he was at the dentist, I had asked about his front teeth.  He has lost all 4 teeth on the top and the middle two have grown back in.  But the ones next to them haven't and they have been out for over a year.  After taking x-rays, the dentist confirmed that there was not room in David's mouth for these to grow back in.  So they sent us to the orthodontist who said that David needed to have his canines pulled right away.  Those wayward front teeth are about to come through the top of his palette, not a place that we want them to poke through.  The thought is that if we pull the canines, the other teeth will come forward to their rightful place to come in.

That leads to another problem.  If his canines are pulled, his mouth could collapse, which means his back teeth would come forward and block out the spaces for all his other teeth.  So, in order to keep his back teeth in the back where they belong, they added that fun thingamagig in his mouth, called a space maintainer.  He calls it a retainer....and he hates it.  He didn't want it and he couldn't eat with it for a couple of days and he cried at every meal.  Like Julie, though, he has learned how to eat with it (although, still very slowly) and seems to be getting used to it.

Of course the pain and problems eating will come right back again when he gets those two teeth pulled at the beginning of September.  Oh, the joys of fixing teeth.

What sort of hardware did you have to wear?  What do you think of the trend of getting braces when kids are still in elementary school?