No more braces!

Today ended the 2.5 year process of my youngest's (13) adventure into orthodonture.   He went in as a little boy, well a little boy to me, with a crew cut and came out a teenager with shaggy hair!  He got to start his adventure with the ever popular palette expander.  He's not big on pain or discomfort, so I was concerned with how it was going to go.  Other than the application(and removal) it really wasn't too bad for him other than some minor achey-ness.  He only had to do that for 6 months, but he talked funny the whole time! LOL

Next came what I like to call the Terminator stage.  As soon as the palette expander was removed, we moved right onto the Herbst device.  It's used in place of  head gear.  Head gear pushes the top jaw back, or keeps it from moving forward, so the lower jaw can line up.  The Herbst device actually pushes the lower jaw forward, allowing the back of the jawbone to grow into the space, therein keeping the jaw in the proper position.



The Herbst device also is not condusive to opening your mouth too wide, otherwise the hinge and pin come apart.  Thankfully, that only happened 3 times in the year that he wore this.  My poor son was in pain for almost the whole entire 1st month.  The little screws on the bottom ended up almost making holes in his cheeks.  It was a long year and he was glad to see that go!

Finally, we moved onto braces, phew!  The hard part was OVER!  Other than slight discomfort after wire changes, this was a piece of cake.  Even the removal was easy.  I left for 10 mins to make a phonecall, came back and they were off!  So now we are to the wonderful world of retainers, which his looks more like Invsalign, than a retainer.

Now if he would only get a haircut!