4 of 24 aligners

I put in my fourth set of aligners this evening. Nothing new to report right now...just excited about the continued progress. :)

3 of 24 aligners

I got my 3rd set of aligners two days ago! :) I am always so happy when I get to start wearing the next set of aligners. After all, each new set gets me closer and closer to the finish line.

As mentioned previously, I did get attachments put on my teeth. I have a total of 8, equally distributed in each quadrant of my mouth:

I realize that it is very difficult to see the attachments due to the quality of the images, so I have outlined them in red in the lower picture. What is nice is that I don't find the attachments to be that noticeable in 'real life'. They completely match the colour of my teeth, and I think they'd only be visible to someone who is a short distance from me. If I can get my hands on a better camera, I will post other pictures of the attachments.

And for the record: So far Invisalign causes much less pain/discomfort than the train track braces.

Update (Feb 11, 2009):

I wanted to quickly mention that I have had no problems with the attachments so far. I thought that I might experience some mouth sores due to the attachments, but I have had nothing of the sort. The reason I thought I might get mouth sores is because I recall that the brackets from my traditional braces used to cut my cheeks. So this is yet another instance of "Invisalign: 1, Traditional Braces: 0".

Update (Feb 15, 2009):

As an example of how unnoticeable the attachments are, there have been a few times when I've been brushing my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror and panicked that an attachment had fallen off...only to realize that it was still there...they're just so well camouflaged! Similarly, there have been a couple mornings where I have woken up thinking that I forgot to put my aligners in my mouth the night before,...but the aligners are actually in my mouth! I guess that means that I'm really used to the feeling of the aligners in my mouth :)

A Downfall of Invisalign

For those of you who are considering Invisalign treatment, and are looking to weigh some pros and cons, I thought I would share an issue that I have with Invisalign. It's nothing serious, but I think that it's worth consideration.

I find it very difficult to wear the aligners for 22 hours a day. That only gives me 2 hours a day to do all of my eating, drinking, and brushing of my teeth. If we say that I'm having 3 meals a day, with no snacks in between, that gives me 40 minutes for each meal (for both eating and brushing). You may think that that sounds like a lot, but think about when you're eating with other people. I'm not the type of person who would jump up abruptly in the middle of an after-meal conversation to head off to the washroom to pop the aligners back in. I guess it's different if you don't mind the people around you knowing that you're getting this treatment, but for myself, I am keeping it secret so I don't like taking my aligners out or putting them back in in front of others. Besides, you're supposed to brush your teeth before you put the aligners back in, so you really do need to go off to the washroom so that you can brush your teeth after each meal. Also, as I mentioned, it's 40 minutes per meal if you're not snacking during the day. I have tended to stay away from snacking now that I am undergoing the Invisalign treatment because even to eat just one cookie, I think about how I'd then have to go to the washroom to brush my teeth and floss my teeth all over again. That just seems like too much work and too much time taken away from my meals. So it's very rare for me to now have any snacks, whereas before I would snack regularly throughout the day. Also, I don't feel like I can grab a coffee any time that I want because that also takes away from my meal time. So I have had to change my previous dietary habits of snacking and drinking coffees (or any other non-water beverages) while undergoing this Invisalign treatment.

Having said all of this, I do still like Invisalign. I still wouldn't choose to have train track braces just so that I could have snacks whenever I wanted... I like the fact that they are pretty much invisible, and that when I do take them out, that I can eat whatever I want. If I want to eat a hard and sticky candy apple, then I can do that--I just have to time how long it takes me to eat it hahaha :)

Also, my boyfriend finally figured out that I am having the Invisalign treatment. However, it was mainly due to the fact that he was tipped off by seeing the aligner case in my bathroom. He thought that I had purchased some sort of mouthguard to wear when I play sports. Even when he approached me to ask me about my purchase, he didn't notice that I was wearing the aligners. It wasn't until I started smiling uncontrollably during the conversation that he got close up to my mouth and said "You're wearing them now!!!". He was quite surprised and is very impressed with how unnoticeable they are :)

I get my attachments on in two days (my appointment got moved to February 5th).