Under Construction

As of late June this mouth has been under construction and will continue to be for the next 3 to 3 1/2 years.  

My poor boy who has never had a cavity in his life or sucked his thumb like his mamma did, just got dealt an unlucky hand.  His mouth is super narrow and his upper teeth acted as a block to his bottom teeth, leaving no room for his jaw to move forward like it should have.

In late June stage 1 of a multi stage process was started when an expander was glued into his mouth that had to be manually widened once a day.  He handled the process extremely well and I was hopeful that braces wouldn't be to hard on him.  I was wrong.  Early Monday morning we headed to the orthodontist to get started on stage 2.  And the first 4 days were awful!  My usual sweet tempered, strong boy was anything but his normal self.  His mouth throbbed, he was hungry for real food (pop cycles, ice cream, soup and yogurt was about all he could really handle.)  and he hated us for making him get braces.  I started him on ibuprofen before we even got to the dentist Monday morning and nothing seemed to put a dent in the amount of pain his poor mouth was in.  As we hid every set of pliers we could find (in fear that he would seriously try to pry the braces off after day 2) my heart ached for him.

Thankfully, by Thursday night the pain had become manageable and my sweet boy seems to be making his way back.  I'm just hoping and praying he doesn't experience this kind of pain each time they have to adjust wires.  I hate watching him suffer and feeling like there is nothing I can do to really ease his pain.

So now that the bad days seem to be behind us, I can't begin to explain how excited I am to have this process started.  After waiting 12 1/2 years for all of his baby teeth to fall out and still having to have 2 pulled, he is now on his way to having a beautiful mouth to complement this handsome face...

Lovely, isn't he.  :)