Week 26

Well my lower teeth are SLOOOOOWLY moving down from behind my top teeth when I bite down. You can see a VERY SLIGHT difference in my bite between this week and week 23's picture. I can't believe there really hasn't been that much movement in 3 weeks!! The process of braces really does take years!

Also my clear power chain is now an ugly shade of light yellow because of the mustard in my sandwiches! Doh! 2 more weeks until my next adjustment! I can't wait!

Sorry for the bad quality of pictures. My camera broke and I can only use my iPhone :(

Week 26:                                                Week 23:
             

6 months!

Today I have officially had my braces on for 6 months! Wow, that went by pretty fast! Let's hope the next 6 months go by just as quickly! :) Maybe I should celebrate with popcorn & chewy candies? Ya?!

Week 23

   

When comparing my teeth from Week 14 (left) to Week 23 (right), you can see that my lower teeth have moved down a little bit and you can now see my bottom brackets when I bite down. These elastics have changed my bite so much and I no longer have to force my lower jaw back to bite down. I can't say how awesome this is! And it's only getting better from here. Someone I haven't seen in a few months have said that my braces have really changed my face, in a good way. Really??! I mean obviously I can't tell because I look at my face everyday, but this is really great news! *does the running man*

Sorry for the quality of picture. My camera broke and I won't be able to invest in a new one for a while. So taking pictures from my iPhone will have to do.

Pressure

Well it has been almost a week in rubber bands & a power chain and overall my mouth isn't sore anymore. There is still constant pressure on my lower jaw and there are times I love it and times I want to scream because I'm not used to it. My bite has changed a LOT. There are teeth touching each other that haven't touched in months or ever. It's a weird feeling, but I'm so anxious for my bottom teeth to come into alignment!

Week 21

Guess what this picture means??? Yup I am officially in rubber bands! Super Heavy 6 oz. ones at that! It's in the classic Class II configuration to bring my lower jaw forward, so it goes from my canine to my 1st molar (my back molars don't have brackets yet). Talk about pressure!

They also put a power chain on my upper 6 teeth to close small gaps. It's clear so you can kind of see it in the picture above. I still hate how one of my front teeth is longer than the other but hopefully they will fix that soon. My next adjustment is in 8 weeks! I hope these weeks go by fast.

Week 19

Well I woke up this morning and my upper right central incisor is now touching my lower incisor bracket! It feels really weird, but it's good to know that my wires are doing their job and moving my teeth, even though I can't see a huge physical difference. I still need to take new pictures and post them. Hopefully this Friday. I guess I haven't been motivated to take new pictures because nothing interesting has happened in my mouth.

Also, I ran into a friend I haven't seen in a while and she said "You have braces? Didn't you get Invisalign?" And I told her the braces were to fix my bite not straighten my teeth (even though my teeth relapsed somewhat after I failed to wear my Invisalign retainers. I probably should have never gotten Invisalign at all). She tells me "You don't need braces. Your teeth are fine!" Seriously? My bite has been awful for years and I think it's annoying how people assume braces are just for straightening teeth. Little to they know that the longest part is fixing the bite. And I have a pretty deep overbite that forces my lower jaw to move back so I can bite down. How can people tell me I don't need them when they have no clue as to what's going on in my mouth?!

Week 17

So here I am at Week 17 and I feel like my teeth have hit a wall (so to speak). There hasn't been a lot of apparent movement with my teeth and I feel like this "thicker" wire hasn't done any work at all! I've taken some picture last Friday so I will post them up later. Maybe when I compare my pictures I will see some differences. I'm still waiting on my lower teeth to move lower and it's taking forever! Yeah, I'm not a patient person. Can't you tell??