Here is a picture of me before I got braces. Like many of my friends and family, you may be thinking "why?? you have prefect teeth!" Well besides doing this for myself and not for anyone else... I do have crowding on my bottom teeth that have gotten worse over time, and of course I don't smile with those. I also have one side of my smile that looks better than the other - as you can see in the picture I angle my face to my better side.
My ortho said I would need to have braces on 18-24 months...I was a candidate for invisialign but decided to go with the traditional metal braces because it was cheaper, would produce a better result faster! Makes sense right? I know some people are worried about what others think but from my experience it really gave me confidence and helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin. My ortho also said i would probably need 4 premolars extracted down the road but would see how things progressed first without extracting first.
January 7th, 2016
The day has come. Braces are ON! I was nervous, excited, anxious.. everything a normal person would feel before embarking on a 18-24month journey of having a mouth of metal. Below you'll see the front few from day 1 - one of the wires wasn't in it's bracket - it was the canine on the right side of the photo. I found out about 1 week after getting them on and I needed to go back to the office to get it fixed and let me tell you ..my teeth were already sore! Which means my teeth were already moving a bit in the first week.You can see my comparison picture between day 1 and my first adjustment!
First day of braces compared to my first adjustment! lots of movement!
After 6 months of braces my ortho and I decided on the the extractions of all of my first premolars (upper and lower). It was a hard decision but i did it on June 9th!! It's been 6 weeks and i just went in for my first powerchain change ..you can see the progress closing my gaps so far.. Please let me know how your braces journey is going! I'd love to hear and stories similar to mine or if you have the same timeline as me!!
The right side of my mouth
The left side of my mouth
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How old are you and how far along in to your treatment are you? 
so that added to this time. All in all, I do not regret my decision on extractions. My orthodontist was right, it helped my protrusion SO much, as you can see from my pictures. My smile looks a lot flatter which I like. I have pictures of me from over a year ago and it looked like my teeth were so protruded, I didn't notice it until now.
