invisalign update---halfway through

hey there.  i thought i'd do an invisalign update since i'm about halfway through the first treatment.  what i mean by that is the first set of trays that do the majority of moving my teeth.  i had 42 sets of those trays based on the initial scan (they do a scan now of your teeth instead of an impression, at least through invisalign).  then after i am done with those trays, they will scan my teeth again and do whatever tweaking needs to be done through different sets of refinement trays.  the ortho said that if we can get my teeth to at least 80% of what they projected in the first set of 42 trays that would be great and then would catch everything else up with refinements.  so if a couple of teeth are stubborn and not moving properly, they give me sets of trays where all the teeth that don't need to move will be static in the trays but the few teeth that need to be fixed up more will move with each tray.  it's pretty cool.  

so anyway, i put myself back about 9 weeks because i kept tray 21 on for all that time--9 weeks.  i could not keep the trays in my mouth during the day because this was at the peak of my pregnancy nausea and having the trays in my mouth was unbearable, it made me gag constantly.  so i did the best i could and pretty much wore them only at night.  the good thing is that my teeth didn't move back but the not so good news is that i didn't move forward in treatment and am about 9 or so trays behind now.  oh well, i just had to do what i could do and the ortho understood and just asked me to keep them in during the night until i could have them in during the day.  finally this past week i was able to keep the trays in my mouth during most of the day and was able to switch out to tray 22.  i feel like i still have them out of my mouth a lot because i have to eat every 1-2 hours during the day, and every time i have to take out my trays, and then when i am done eating i brush and floss my teeth and then put the trays back in.  it's kind of annoying but at least i'm making progress now.

so now instead of sometime in june, my first set of trays will be done sometime in august.  oh well.  i have been in these new trays, set 22, for almost 4 days (i wear them for one week), and i can see how much my teeth have moved in just those 4 days.  it's amazing.  but in general, my teeth have moved quite a bit.  it may be hard to see in photos, but i can tell.  my bottom teeth used to all be overlapping each other and now i actually have a small space in between most of my bottom teeth in the front.  my upper back molars have moved forward quite a bit and there is room in between my front teeth and my eye teeth so that my front teeth have room to rotate and straighten out.  it's just so crazy.  and the spaces where i had my pre-molars removed are closing more and more.  the ortho actually said he noticed that when people have teeth extracted for straightening, the gaps close up much quicker with invisalign than with braces, in general.

anyway, i'm glad to be moving forward again with invisalign and have been really pleased with the progress so far.  it's still a little painful, especially in the first 3 days after i change my trays--my teeth are very sensitive for a few days--and then once they have moved into the proper place in the current trays they are not so sensitive.  but i think my mouth has toughened up because my gums and tongue and all the skin on the inside of my mouth basically doesn't get cut up and sore like it did in the beginning.  i used to have to file down the edges of the trays but i don't have to do that anymore.

so!  i have some different pictures below showing the progress, if you'd like to check it out.  i know it's not the most pleasant thing to look at, haha.  but here you go:

this was from november 2, which was probably tray 18, the top is the very first day

top is from december 13, so i was in tray 21 for almost 4 weeks, wearing it only at night, bottom is first day

bottom photo is from last week, right after i changed into tray 22, so halfway down! top photo is from the first day.

so i was trying to find a picture of me before invisalign, to compare my teeth and smile.  this is mostly what i found:

i just did not smile properly, with my teeth showing.  at least not in pictures.  because i was always self-conscious about my teeth.  so i had to really search to find a photo of me really smiling, and i really only found one easily, right when i started invisalign, so here is a comparison of what i looked like at the beginning of invisalign versus now:

i think this is pre-invisalign, but after i had my pre-molars extracted

this is the first day of invisalign

this is from november 2nd, a little less than halfway through

this is mid november, without the invisalign in during the day

this is just a few days ago, tray 22, without the trays in

wooohoooo!  that's progress!  i absolutely cannot wait to see what my smile looks like at the end of all of this!