Week 23 - before and after pictures

Week 23 with the elastic bands

I didn't mean to leave it nearly two weeks before doing an update, but lately I've had a lot of stuff on my plate, sorry about that.
So I was expecting a lot more pain with this square wire, but actually, it really only hurts the first few days - exactly like the other wire changes really.
The teeth are moving very, very slowly at this point. I'm still wearing the elastics - although this week I have not been very disciplined about wearing them all the time, but I do wear them every night.

Apologies for the, again, rubbish photo quality. The past few weeks, I had access to a proper camera, and now I am back to taking pictures with my smartphone again, and the image quality of the pictures has really declined over the past 5 months.

So my top row of teeth are near perfect. Only one thing, the tooth to the right of my front teeth (in the photo) just needs to move a few more millimetres. But it is moving. I can now floss and see a bit of space, so it really just needs to edge in a little more to be perfectly in line with the others.

Damon Braces Before & After: Start of treatment to almost 6 months later.

On the bottom row of teeth, you might be able to make out in the picture there is a small gap just to the left of the centre teeth. It's not really too big of a gap, and from reading other Blogs this is quite normal. I expect next time I'm at the orthodontist they'll do something to close this.

To the right is a before and after picture from the first week to this week, so almost 6 months treatment time. Looking back at the time before I had braces, my teeth really were quite jumbled. They're looking so lovely now, I'm glad I had them done!

Week 7 - 'before and after' pictures

Top picture - Day 25; bottom picture three and a half weeks later - quite a dramatic before and after transformation!

I was planning to do an update on Monday to talk about what changes had been made by my orthodontist, if any, but it turns out I read the date wrong, and it's actually next Monday. So really nothing much to report, I have had absolutely no pains or aches. It probably hasn't really moved a lot, but the crooked tooth is looking better all the time, it's really moved so much, just in the last three and a half weeks. To the right are two pictures, the one below was taken today, and the one above was taken three and a half weeks ago (Day 25), and you can see how much the teeth have changed in that short time. Next update on Monday, when I actually have my appointment!

Day 30 with Damon Braces and 'before and after' comparison pictures!

So it's now been a little over four weeks and although the time has not really flown by, it hasn't dragged so much either, in part because it's quite fun to write this blog. There's not really much pain to report, and eating is mostly fine. I still don't bite into anything like a sandwich though. I find it better to cut it up into smaller pieces.
I feel I can now bite down and my back teeth fit together. I felt that I wasn't able to before, not properly, and that my front overlapping teeth were hitting the brackets on the bottom front teeth. At first that was painful and sensitive. When I would try to grind my teeth at night, I instinctively opened my jaws again because it hurt a little. But now my back teeth all connect together.
I don't push it and really try to bite down because I don't want the brackets to be damaged. But it's enough now that I can chew my food properly.
So here is a quick 'before and after' review after a month of having the braces on.

Left picture taken at 3 days. Right picture exactly 4 weeks later.

The change is quite subtle to see from the front, maybe you have to zoom in a little, but you can definitely notice that the wires are much straighter in the after picture. The teeth either side of the two front bottom teeth have really come out from behind those front teeth. And looking at the two front teeth I can also notice that the one next to the very crooked tooth has actually been turned to face the front more, which has straightened the wire out considerably.
Then there's these comparison photos which were taken 9 days apart.

Left picture taken on Day 21. Right picture taken on Day 30.

The difference is much harder to see, but the tooth just to the left of the two front teeth has very slightly moved, perhaps only a few millimetres, but it still is moving.