Orthodontics and Braces :litebulb

Does anyone here have braces (including Invisalign)?

Has anyone had braces in the past?

Do you still wear your retainers?

When I was 15, I had braces for a little less than a year for an overjet and a gap between my teeth. I personally think that the braces were taken off too soon. And, I was embarrassed to wear my Hawley retainer fulltime for a year afterwards because my moo always made such a big deal about my orthodontics ( She would whine on the phone to my aunts that "her DAAAAD had brayceees....everything that's wrong with her is his stuff"). She is a whiny dumb bitch. If she had issues with my fathers genes, then she should not have bred with him. But, back to the topic.

Since the braces were taken off too soon, I feel that I still had a slight overjet on the upper arch and a slight overcrowding on the lower arch. I recently got Invisalign Express which is a cheaper and quicker form of Invisalign in July. I should be done with them in December (hopefully). So far, I am happy with them.

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"I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."
~Sigmund Freud

I'm getting my braces off next Friday!
I will have a permanent retainer on the bottom and a heavy duty retainer on the top because I grind my teeth at night.
He says I have to wear the retainer full time except for eating for the first year or more and then always at night.
My sister got braces during childhood because she looked like a demented Jack o lantern, and she got lazy with the retainers at some point after getting married. Her teeth started migrating. But she has a dentist relative, so I think she got hooked up with some kind of fix. She's very poor, I don't know what it was.
My orthodontist does full before and after pics, so I should have some fun to share next week.
For how far some of my teeth were moved, it seems like he could have entirely gotten rid of my overbite, but he "warned" me it wouldn't be eliminated entirely, and sure enough, it is reduced significantly, but not gone completely.
I also have a lot of chips missing in front because the grinding was doing my mouth in... It all still looks a bit hacked, but they're very straight now.
Two years, nearly to the month, I think I started in November.

@Presto

Yipeee! I look forward to seeing pics. Is your top retainer going to be a wire or a clear one? You said "heavy duty"...maybe it is a spring retainer like this.

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"I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."
~Sigmund Freud

I had this horrible thing that moved my lower jaw forward. It worked and I have an amazing jawline now but it sucked massive donkey balls when I was a kid.

I think it is supposed to be more like durable plastic than your typical retainer because I am prone to bruxism, although it is more that I clench really hard than do any grinding.
One of my sister in laws has retainers(after metal braces) that look like invsalign after she had her teeth knocked out of alignment in a car crash. I thought this might be what he means because he says something about providing me with a flat plane on the uppers.
Shall know more Friday!

Mistress Rotwang, the ortho did offer to break my lower jaw to fix it for me, but I didn't really want to go that far... :goggle
That same sister in law has a step daughter who was having her palette expanded. Wow they can do some crazy stuff with faces!

My narcissistic moo had decided at some point that she prefers my chin to hers even though my face takes a slant backwards under my nose while hers doesnt. She takes many opportunities to tell me that my profile is better than hers, which she is flat out imagining for some reason. I keep waiting for her to do it again so I can mention that I was offered a broken jaw to fix my profile.
It's true that below my lip I have a nice indent and then an actual chin that sticks forward and hers goes straight down from her lip, but the over all backwards slant combined with glasses makes me look like the nerdiest of eggheads.
She just wants the little nubbin that graces the front of my weak chin.
My cheekbones and jaw corners make up for a lot, but I can still smell her gaslighting a mile away. She simply wants me to feel better about my profile than she does about hers, but can NEVER address anything straight forward.

I had braces for about 2 years and 9 months back in the late 1970s. The first half of those months I had them only on my lower teeth so they were not as visible. But the last half of the time I had them on both the upper and lower teeth.

The orthodontist was a miracle worker, he had to fix 3 different problems all at the same time and he was successful. He earned every penny he was paid.

The braces came off 2 days before Thanksgiving in 1979 so it was nice tearing into a Thanskgiving meal without all the metal. It was also a sign of my growing up that my last visit to see him was in early 1982 and being 18 years old I was able to drive there myself for the only time.

I've had braces 3 times! At 11 and 23 (regular braces) and then Invisalign at 36. And yet my teeth are still not straight.

The thing is, it's all about the retainer. But I can't wear a metal retainer because it gives me stomach ulcers - I was sick the whole time I had my second set of braces. And my Invisalign went to hell because I had gum surgery and couldn't wear my retainer for about a week. Maybe I just have mutant teeth, but that was enough for them to start getting crooked again.

@deegee

Did the teeth relapse any?

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"I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."
~Sigmund Freud

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peace-n-quiet
@deegee

Did the teeth relapse any?

Relapse, as in they moved back to the positions they were in prior to the braces being put on? No.

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deegee

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peace-n-quiet
@deegee

Did the teeth relapse any?

Relapse, as in they moved back to the positions they were in prior to the braces being put on? No.

Yes, that's what I meant.

You did have an awesome ortho!

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"I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."
~Sigmund Freud

I had an assortment of retainers and traditional braces, but not Invisalign, from the ages of 6-18. (I'm pretty sure the first couple of years was just a money scam.)

My teeth were pretty crooked starting out and I had a nasty overbite. I remember being able to push my lower teeth into my upper palate.

After all those years of pain, (and the permanent stains on my teeth that even the dentist hasn't been able to remove.) I refused to wear any more retainers into adulthood. I've only had one lower tooth move slightly. It's barely noticeable to me and definitely no one else.

I actually prefer teeth that are slightly crooked (a weird fetish of mine.) Now my teeth look a little too perfect. They almost look like dentures to me.

I've had Invisalign and it requires some discipline. I feel like I was kind of duped into getting it though. My teeth aren't that crooked; I just have a couple of teeth on the bottom set that are a little off. After I completed my first set of trays my dentist asked me if I was satisfied and I said that one of the teeth still looked slanted so he gave me another twenty trays...well I thought they would do an actual assessment of how my teeth had moved, not just ask me what I thought and make me do another almost-whole year of stupid trays. So I'm on my second set of trays...long story, feel free to PM me if you want any other details but I've HATED wearing them. Also, they make me sort of sound lispy when I talk, which is fun, NOT.