For some unexplainable reason to me, Lia has been DIEING to get her braces on for years. This is probably due to the fact that all of her friends have been getting their braces on and off since she was half way through elementary school. Due to the fact that Lia has lost her baby teeth at a glacial pace AND because we go to an HMO dentist who only puts braces on one time instead of two times (which is all the trend these days), Lia had to wait many years later than ALL of her friends. And the ONLY reason she got her braces on this this year instead of next was due to the fact that I finally put my foot down last August at her annual check-up when her regular dentist said that we would "wait one more" year for her last two baby teeth to fall out on their own before setting up an appointment to extract them. Since I have been hearing this "one more year" comment for many years, I threw a little, mom-fit right there in the cleaning room and the dentist agreed to take a more extensive, panoramic x-ray of her teeth. Within five minutes we found out why Lia's last two baby teeth (both of her canines) had yet to fall out...they were compacted! Needless to say, I think the dentist felt a little sheepish about me being the one to insist that this information be discovered. Since her adult, canine teeth are literally coming in sideways, they would never push out her baby canine teeth. Since these teeth would never come out on their own, we would have waited an entire year to find out this information this coming summer and would have lost an entire year of orthodontia progress. Although this was shocking and unfortunate information to discover, I was grateful that we were finally going to get the ball rolling.
After waiting two months to be seen by the orthodontist for the first time in October, Lia had two more appointments to prepare her for getting her braces on today. Due to her impacted canines, they had to put spacers in her mouth to prepare a place to put a special apparatus that runs across the top of her mouth that will be used to help pull down her adult canines after an oral surgeon removes the baby ones in six months. As a result, she only had her top braces put in today. The entire process is going to add an extra one to two years to the already two regular years that she will need braces. I feel so sorry that Lia has to go through all of this extra, unpleasant "stuff" to get her teeth straight and looking pretty and feel really bad that she will wear braces throughout most of her high school career, but hope that it will all be worth it in the end when she has a beautiful set of straight teeth when this is all said and done.
Lia's before picture that I took yesterday.
It's hard to believe that this is the last picture that will be taken of her without braces on for many, many years to come.
Lia's after picture that I took today after coming home from the dentist office.
The pain hadn't set in yet, so she was still super excited when this picture was taken.
A close up of our favorite pair of tinsel teeth.
The assistant working on Lia's braces after the orthodontist was done putting on the brackets.
Stringing the metal wire in between Lia's brackets. Oh, let the fun begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment