We had another of those days today. One of those milestones that creep up on you, that you don’t know will hit you til it does. Big went for her first fixed braces fitting, and suddenly she looks teen in yet another way, with an orthodontic appliance and a very cute lisp.
I didn’t know braces would do that to her. I’m so pleased that dp suggested we took before pictures as it will be a very long time before we see teeth without metal again. A very long time. These braces will be on between 18 months and 2 years, and then there will be a retainer full time and then part time until adulthood. I really hope it makes a fantastic difference to her, but on some levels the most important difference is the realisation she came to herself today.
And that’s that we do everything we can to make her life better than ours. She knows we make mistakes – oh, how I make mistakes 🙁 – but we try so hard for them to not be the ones that were made in our lives.
I didn’t have dental work, and I wish so much that I had had. My bottom teeth overlap, I can’t keep them clean, my top teeth have little gaps between them and my teeth don’t line up at all. Though from what I’ve learnt in my crash course in orthodontics over the last few nights, that would barely rate on the scale. The real reason Big needs intervention is not about wonky teeth, it’s too do with the fact that one of her teeth has nowhere to go, there isn’t room for it to descend at all. So if they can’t jiggle it all around with braces, she’ll have to have surgery. And I’d really rather avoid that if we can.
So she has braces. Train tracks. With pink elastic bands, obviously. She was *so* brave during the fitting, but I also have to say that the orthodontist was absolutely fabulous with her. He explained everything ahead of time, and held every bit of equipment in her line of sight and showed her what it was and told her what would happen. It made all the difference – so if you have a child about to go through any of this, dig your heels in and make sure your orthodontist is at least as good.
Then we were prepared – I’d been told by Daddacool following some tweeting on the topic, to ask for orthodontic wax, and in fact we ended up with a starter pack that included that, a special toothbrush, a travel toothbrush, a very small bottle of mouthwash and some disclosing tablets. Oh, and a mirror. She’s very pleased with the mirror, and has used it extensively with the special toothbrush in taking her time over cleaning today.
We aren’t getting on too well with the wax though – it says in the instructions to get the braces dry, and she doesn’t seem to be able to achieve that. I daresay that will come.
But I have been so proud of her today, and proud of her staring down the smaller children staring at her (manners, what manners?) at the swimming pool, and even more proud of her going on and doing her Silver Challenge Award in swimming. Today of all days, she set out and did all sorts of skills – surface dives, 100m in 3 minutes, treading water and so on, finishing up with 800m in 30 minutes. And all this from a girl who couldn’t swim when we moved here less than two years ago.
Definitely a proud mummy moment. And I can be a tiny bit proud of myself, because I remembered to tell her that I was proud of her.
[If there was ever a post that was worthy of meming in the mummy blogger world, this must be it. Please feel free to share your proud mummy moments – no linky as I don’t want ppl to think I’m doing it for the link backs or traffic, but if I can inspire you to think of a pmm and share it, I’ll be very happy. If you want to drop it in comments, I’m happy to do a roundup post full of link love in a few days time 🙂 ]
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