Another Expander

Our orthodontist, Dr. Teifer, loves our family. You know why? Because we have our fourth child in an expander, starting the first phase of orthodontic work. She loves that our children all have such "big, beautiful teeth!" I bet she does!

I was the only of my siblings to get braces, though I think my brother thinks he could he benefited from them, though his teeth aren't bad.  And Jason... he had braces twice. The second one after having jaw surgery! It's no wonder all of our kids have to get all this work done! I reminded all my kids when they got their expanders, especially Erik, that expanders replace the need to break their jaw later on, which sounds completely awful to me. So a little squeeze every night as I tighten the expander is not a bad idea after all.

Erik had a very bad under bite, so he will need to wear his for 9 months, whereas his siblings only wore theirs for 6 months. Since he has a texture issue (hence his sensitive eating habits) he was particularly disturbed when they put the expander in his mouth. The assistant said she thought he was little "traumatized" by the whole thing. They didn't even finish cleaning out the specks of glue, because he was so miserable. He didn't talk the rest of the day and took a few days to pick up on his eating. It's been 8 days now and he's a pro at it. You can hardly tell by how he talks and he can eat basically everything he was eating before, which wasn't a wide variety, but I'm glad he can eat his carrots again! 

Under bite, this is after 8 days of the expander. I think it's already improving.

Expander proud!

Done with braces!

It's always an adventure around here!