De-braced today!

[sauerkraut]

Well, the day has finally arrived. The brackets are off.

Let the joys of retainers begin

[Racquel]

How exciting! Congrats!

[chicago29]

Congratulations, sauerkraut!!! Life in retainers is much, much better!!!

[sauerkraut]

Thank you for the congrats, Raquel and chicago. This naked tooth experience is definitely a weird feeling! And the retainers are... liveable-with .

[crazybeautiful]

Congratulations!

I was on retainers every night, but now it's night on/night off, which is good.

[ColoradoGirl]

WOOOOO!!!!!

Congrats.

[Laundraholic]

woohooo!!

congrats!!

how does it feel!?!?

[DRG]

+1, Where is the "like" button? I'd press it two times.

DRG

[sauerkraut]

Thank you, peoples

Unbraced teeth felt very strange at first -- sort of slimy! But I'm getting used to it and the retainers aren't so bad. I'm supposed to wear them at least 16 hours out of 24 which is quite manageable. There's a fixed retainer behind the bottom few front teeth as well.

I think once things have settled down the ortho plans to do a bit more tweaking, so this game isn't quite over yet. But I'm certainly enjoying my sense of freedom after more than 3 years of various appliances in my mouth

[Bullfighter]

Congrats. The thought of the nightly tooth brushing/flossing ritual taking under half an hour sounds exciting!

[sauerkraut]

Thanks, bullfighter. Yes, flossing is a dream. I still have to thread under the permanent retainer but that's nowhere near as fiddly as working round brackets and especially trying to get between molar bands (of which I had 8!!).