Orthodontic Progress

Last month marked 3 years since Rachel started on this current Orthodontic phase. Because of the cleft in her alveolar ridge, her two front teeth were totally crocked and sideways. She was beginning to feel self conscious and even had some teasing from kids who'd not known Rachel all of their Elementary School life.

At that time, in order to start the process on turning those two teeth, she simply had two brackets. We watched those two teeth move quickly and we were left amazed at the progress. This picture shows the before and the after of the two brackets. 

Over time, she has had an entire set of top braces put on. For the last year (maybe longer) we've been waiting on this one tooth to make it's presence known. Wouldn't you know, two days after her last Orthodontist appointment, Rachel began complaining about her mouth. Sure enough that tooth was finally breaking through!! And thus our 12 year old was dealing with "teething pains". Wherever we went, I carried Motrin and Ora-gel to aid in her discomfort.

We saw Dr. Garcia on Friday. She was very excited to see that tooth had finally made an appearance and a new plan was put into motion to now bring it forward to align with the other teeth. 

The brackets that were on some of Rachel's front teeth had to come off so that new ones could be repositioned in order to put the new plan into action. This was the first time in 3 years we'd seen her teeth straight and without brackets! It brought tears to my eyes to see the difference in the before and the now.

She now has a coil from one tooth to another and and then a bracket on the new tooth tied to that coil in order to bring it forward. She had quite a bit of pain over the weekend, and thankfully stacking Motrin and Tylenol and staying on that regularly has helped.

This little mouth has come a long way in the last ::almost:: 13 years!