To be fair, I took Ben in for an evaluation. He did not want braces and was fine with his little gap, though I decided I wanted a second opinion and I was the youngest of 3, time and money run out so often before the youngest gets stuff and often he is in second hand clothes and borrowing shoes because his feet have grown and I have not moved him up a size, he gets last choice pretty often and while I would have loved to not spend the money on another set of braces, I was not about to let that be the issue.
So, off we went, and he needs them, badly. He has an underbite that is pretty well disguised at the moment because his lower teeth are tilting back as his lower jaw grows. But when he closes his teeth together, they don't meet in the back. We may be too late in getting him braces, there's a good chance he will need jaw surgery to correct it when he's in his late teens, but we are going to try. Jake was in the same boat, opposite jaw. His lower jaw was too short. And we avoided surgery in his case, so I am hopeful.
If Ben has to have the surgery, he will have to go back into braces afterward as well. So we may get to pay for braces twice for him. But there's no sense borrowing trouble from some future date, it's a waste of energy to worry about it now. 6 years is a world of change in a child and a family, Matt may have a different job, better insurance, I may have a job by then-there could be all kinds of changes in our lives, no need to give it that much focus now. Much. I can't say I don't worry about it, that's a LOT of money and also not the least of it-surgery on my child. No one can just shrug that off totally.
Anyway, Chan looks great, if a little freaky. Different freaky, not freaky freaky. She has this teeny little mouth, so all I have seen for nearly 2 years is the brackets. Now she has these little square white teeth in there! And more of them and they are arranged so nicely. It's a pain to budget in the initial down payment, but I have to say, it really is worth it for them to have not only the structural advantages of a perfect bite, but also to be so pretty! LOL Everyone wants to look nice and a great smile is no small matter to self esteem.
