The background...

My journey began several years ago now, when I decided against continuing with orthodontic treatment as a teenager. This left me with partially 'fixed' teeth which once I stopped the treatment mid-way through, shuffled around and got gradually worse as time went on. Friends and family would tell me they 'werent that bad' but for anyone who has been there, you'll know what I mean! I was conscious of smiling, laughing, talking... I even developed odd little ways of covering them up! Like laughing with a hand over my mouth or touching my mouth/nose when I was talking so that nobody would notice how awful they are! Sad I know, but I had always just accepted that was how it had to be coz I thought I would always be too much of a wimp to ever do anything about it! Partly because of the costs, partly because of the inconvenience but largely because I was already self-conscious, so what could be worse than sticking great big lumps of metal all over my teeth and feeling like I was back in my teenage years all over again!

Well the day came when I discovered lingual braces... The answer to all my problems...!? Well we'll see! So the next step, I went for a consultation and discovered the problem was more complicated than I had imagined. The planned treatment when I was younger was to extract teeth from the top row and then pull them all back to meet my bottom teeth. Well it turns out, although my top teeth are a bit higgledy piggledy they ARE in the right place, in fact its my bottom jaw that is underdeveloped and ideally needs to come forward to meet my top! Well I umm'ed and aah'ed again over the space of a year or so whether I could face jaw surgery... and it turns out I couldnt!! So I have settled on a compromise, which will neaten up the top row, close all the gaps that I hate so much, and hopefully make me less conscious of opening my mouth, although it wont solve the problem of my bite! But I figured you cant have everything and if I wanted to avoid surgery then this was my only real option! Plus when I smile you dont see my bottom teeth at all so I'm hoping the remaining overbite wont be too noticeable! Side profile - yes you can see that my lower jaw is smaller, but I still have a chin (and only one!! I know some people with this problem have a double-chin like appearance so I'm lucky in that respect!) and as I keep telling myself, I've lived with my face as it is for this long now it cant be that bad lol!!

So thats the story! I had measurements taken about 6 weeks ago and the dreaded braces fitted yesterday! I did a hell of a lot of trawling the internet prior to this point, and really valued finding other people who had been through the process and reading their blogs... so I decided instead of crawling into a hole and staying there until its all over, I'd share my experience too! So if ur reading this then welcome along for the ride!!