Metal Mouth Message Board

Morning! I had my braces placed last Tuesday, along with bite turbos. I HATE the bite turbos. They are little pieces glued to the back of my front teeth to help correct my overbite. I can take the pressure of the braces, aching, suckiness of eating-but the bite turbos are awful. My teeth hit the turbos as designed, so my back teeth don't touch when my mouth is closed. Is this normal? I can't really chew meat very well.

The worst part is my speech. I am an interpreter and speech is very important (which I emphasized at all my appointments), and they said I would get used to it and will be able to speak normally. With a lot of practice, I can say "s". I still have a lisp, and a lot of sounds come out incorrectly (basically any sound where your tongue touches behind your teeth-"th", "sh", "ch"), also I tried to say "allergy" the other day and failed miserably because of the "g".

My question is: does it ever get better? Everyone says I will get to the point where I will forget I have braces, eating is mostly normal, etc. But I can't imagine getting used to the bite turbos. I need to have them for at least the first 6 months, they said. I am in my braces for 12-15 months.

JB

Hello!

I have molar build ups which serve a similar purpose. I was in hell for about 6 days and then on the 7th learned to eat with them.
Give yourself some time, your mouth learns around it even though I thought it would never get better.
Same with the lisp, I have lingual braces on top and do fairly well now.

Don't get discouraged!

I have those on the back of my front teeth too, though yours look a little bigger or different or something. It does get better. When I first got my braces on, it hurt so much more to eat because of these things (well, I'm assuming since I haven't NOT had them with braces)! It would have been alot easier to eat without them in the beginning. And chewing, any pain aside, was harder and I think I sorta started to chew side to side instead of up and down (if that even makes sense.) Like almost a sideways grinding instead of up and down.

But I'm used to them now. Sometimes they are still annoying... like lately I feel like I've been hitting them a little more. My ortho has actually talked about taking them off soon, and I'm actually a little worried! Like what will it be like without them. I don't know if I'll like it. I've had them for 5 months already, btw. And like everyone else says, you will get to the point where you basically forget about your braces.

I do feel a little lispy at times too. It doesn't seem too bad though... what bothers me more is when I spit all over the place when talking! lol

Hey!

I've had both, and I actually prefer the turbo. It'll be betterThe adjustment period that you're going through with the turbos sucks, but it gets better I swear!

Sing a lot, read out loud, do anything to get your time used to hurting the turbo. Your speech with adjust and soon it will be better! I only lisp now when I'm really tired, have just brushed my teeth, or am trying to talk quickly.