<p>I’ve been wearing braces for 5 years, and finally my orthodontist wants to remove the braces. Unfortunately, instead of going straight to retainers, he wants me to wear a positioner everyday for 4 hours and at night until DECEMBER (since I have to leave for college…). He showed me a model and it looks like some bulky colorful plastic that won’t even fit into my mouth. I don’t think I would even be able to close my mouth with that thing on, never mind talk… </p>
<p>Is there some alternative to a positioner? Or a least a better type of positioner? I would greatly appreciate any input from parents, since most of you probably have kids who also had to undergo some sort of orthodontic treatment. ;)</p>
<p>Edit: I guess I posted this in the wrong forum. Can a moderator move this to the Parent Cafe please?</p>
<p>sorry never heard of it. My S went from braces to a retainer. Perhaps you can wear it while sleeping and no one would see it except your roomies.</p>
<p>I think the best person to talk about this with is your Orthodontist - you know, the guy your parents paid thousands of dollars to. He knows your personal teeth issues and orthodontia better than anyone on this site.</p>
<p>A positioner is nothing like a retainer. It’s like a big bulky bite plate that you put in your mouth at night. It’s supposed to help close up all the small gaps between teeth caused by braces… I wore one after I got my braces off and HATED IT. Back then, they were made out of black tire rubber–and they tasted like it. I called mine “the tire”. It looked like a Ubangi lip disc. I used to take it out of my mouth when I was asleep, and throw it across the room. Every morning I had to hunt it down and wash it out.</p>
<p>Agreed with UCLA Band Mom: positioners and retainers are nothing alike. Retainers are meant to keep your mouth as it is. Positioners are meant to move your teeth into final alignment. My orthodontist seemed to think it would be a great idea to give me one when I still had a lot of major movement left to do (however, he had also given me braces far too young).</p>
<p>Mine lacked the… interesting taste that UCLA Band Mom’s had, but it was just as frustrating. There were only three little holes to breath out of and I discovered through use of the device that I was a mouth breather when I slept. I suffered from sleep deprivation for the time I was forced to use it. I was finally able to stop wearing it when my teeth had moved so far out of alignment (due to early removed braces) that the positioner no longer fit over my teeth.</p>
<p>OP, I would ask your orthodontist if there isn’t another option. Positioners are not something that are at all comfortable wear. They’re more like torture devices and do not seem to do much good unless you only have extremely minor alignment issues to fix (such as the small gaps caused by braces).</p>
<p>I would definitely ask about other options and if it comes down to it get a second opinion. I had an orthodontist that wanted to have me wear headgear, so I went to a different one and I ended up with perfect teeth with no headgear. The worst thing I ever had to endure were rubber bands and powerchains. Not the end of the world. Though I’ve never heard of small gaps caused by braces, that didn’t happen to me.</p>
<p>My new ortho, however, actually uses retainers to make small adjustments to the positioning of your teeth. I had a retainer for two years before I ever got braces to shorten the amount of time I’d need to be in the braces.</p>
<p>Can’t help but smile (with my pretty decent teeth that my parents spent a small fortune on during a 5 year period that ended 34 years ago this month).</p>
<p>Headgear was the worst. Several long years of feeling like Lady from Lady and the Tramp when she has the muzzle on. That’s what I called mine, “the muzzle”.</p>
<p>The “small gaps” were a real problem back then in the dark ages when the braces were full metal bands that went entirely around each tooth. Painful to put on, painful to take off. When my S had braces, the wires and rubber bands and powerchains were attached to small appliances glued to the front of each tooth. Much, much easier. And with his, there were no small gaps.</p>
<p>Now I got my braces off about 2 or 3 weeks before my freshman college orientation. What I had for a retainer sounds kind of like the positioner, but smaller since it fit entirely inside my very small mouth. It was one piece and had molds to fit both my upper and lower teeth. It also did not cover my upper palate, the way a traditional, small hard pink plastic retainer with a wire does. [I never did have one of those traditional retainers.] There were some kind of breathing holes in the front between the molds for my front incisors. My retainer looked like the heavy-duty kind of mouth guard that are used by some linemen when they’re playing football. When I first got it, I thought I’d never get used to it. But after a couple of weeks, I really didn’t have any trouble sleeping in it. And that was all my orthodontist required for me: Sleep in the thing. It was much, much easier to sleep in than the muzzle head gear was. The funny thing was, I gnawed through it. The orthodontist had never had that happen before. Made me a new one. Gnawed through that one too. Now, this orthodontist had me wear the thing every night for like four or five years and I gnawed through them—about one a year—until he tried making me one out of black rubber that tasted bad. (None of the earlier, non-black rubber ones tasted bad.) Didn’t gnaw through that black one, but didn’t actually wear it as much as I was supposed to. Now the other odd thing about all these retainers is that during college, my more-or-less constant headaches disappeared.</p>
<p>And several years of graduate school without the retainer, I had a dentist diagnose me with TMJ—one main symptom of which is grinding teeth at night and another is a more-or-less constant headache. He made me a “night guard” that looked for all the world just like the top half of my old retainer. That helped the headaches and prevents me from grinding my teeth, but I continue to gnaw through night guards at a rate of about one every couple of years ever since. Most folks with TMJ (including my brother) can wear the same night guard for as long as 10 years.</p>
<p>S’s retainers were a pair of things that look just like my night guard, except he has one for the top teeth and one for the bottom. They’re separate, so there’s no problem talking or drinking water. He had no trouble wearing them at night, but he’s now down to only needing to wear them a couple of days every month or so to keep his teeth in place. So far, he hasn’t gnawed through his.</p>
<p>Thanks for your detailed responses, everyone. </p>
<p>I guess I will have the same problem as Kender, since I am also a mouth breather when sleeping and will be receiving a similar type of positioner. Yesterday, I called my orthodontist to voice my concerns about sleep deprivation and to ask about an alternative, but he simply said that “it won’t be a problem” and really gave me no additional information. Oh well, I guess it’s too late to switch to a different orthodontist… </p>
<p>And is it really normal to have to wear a positioner for four months? It seems like most people nowadays progress to a retainer after braces, not a positioner…</p>
<p>headgear was pure and utter hell, enough said.</p>
<p>Why not just ask for the retainer? I mean it would do the same thing.</p>
<p>IF i am understanding this right, it will be similar to a retainer.</p>
<p>Four months is really nothing once you get used to it.</p>
<p>I had this one medieval device once that went in the top of my mouth that had a crank that had to be turned every night (mom found this fun). It had full caps on both sides of my mouth (covered about 3 teeth) and it was hell. </p>
<p>The next device i had looked like hydrolic lifts, i kid you not. And it worked like one too Oo</p>
<p>Yes, that’s normal. Positioners are for people who get their braces off sooner than usual. The positioner does the final alignment of the teeth instead of wearing braces longer. Retainers are for teeth that are already in their final position.</p>
<p>I used to wear mine in the evening, and then to bed. So even if I threw it across the room while I was asleep, I still got around 8 hours of time wearing it.</p>
<p>I had a positioner and absolutely hated it. I could barely breathe with it in my mouth and quit wearing it long before I was supposed to. This was almost 40 years ago so maybe it was the latest thing? One of my big regrets in life is that I was too young and shy to demand the retainers instead. My teeth are not as straight now as they were when my braces came off in part because I couldn’t tolerate that rubber-tire positioner.</p>
<p>Go back to your orthodontist. Ask if he could please get you some Invisalign braces for a while. Those are those clear plastic things. You would have to take them off to eat, but you’d be able to talk and breathe. If he doesn’t offer that service, surely he has a colleague who does.</p>
<p>happymom just made the same suggestion I was going to! Invisalign might be a little more pricey than that barbaric positioner, but I bet if you implore your parents (use lots of pictures!) they’ll help you out and spring for the humane treatment of your teeth.</p>
<p>I’ve been known to suggest giving me an advance on X amount of Christmas and birthday presents to cover the expense of the new thing which is undoubtedly more expensive than initially planned. I’m currently about 10 birthdays and Christmases in the hole with the expense of my new-to-me car! haha.</p>
<p>Another thought…would it be possible to just keep your braces for first semester? Seems mortifying, but then again you’re already used to them and chances are your friends aren’t really going to care. If it’ll prevent you from all the terror of this positioner it might be worth it. </p>
<p>Orthodontics are such a pain. I had braces starting in 3rd grade through 8th grade (with a year off in the middle so I could lose the rest of my baby teeth) with just about all the appliances named above–chains, wires, headgear (which my dad called my “night brace” and I wanted to kill him for it) that looked like a football helmet, all of the above. My all-time favorite one, though, was this smooth bracket that was placed on the backs of my top front teeth. The purpose of the bracket was to prevent me from biting all the way down so that my molars would have to grow more, thus improving my overbite. WOW it’s nearly impossible to eat when you can’t close your jaws enough to make your molars touch together for about 3 months!</p>
<p>In the end, it’ll all be water under the bridge in a few short months. Regardless of what happens, you’ll be done with all of this, probably forever, much sooner than you realize. Then you’ll get to look back and thank your lucky stars you never have to do it again! Your beautiful smile will be worth every dumb appliance I promise :)</p>
<p>The Invisalign things mentioned by happymomof1 and kristin5792 are very similar to the “retainers” that my S’s orthodontist had made for him. Clearly for my S, we didn’t need to spring for multiple sets of aligners for both his upper and lower teeth, since these went on after his braces had done the real work of realigning his teeth. [His are probably Vivera retainers]. Because these come in two pieces, they will be much more comfortable than the one piece positioner your orthodontist is recommending. You might also point out that the comfort of the device will make it much easier for you to be compliant with instructions.</p>
<p>Much of my own long painful struggle with braces was that as a teen I fought tooth and nail on complying with the required hours for the headgear and not eating forbidden foods.</p>
<p>Thanks happymomof1, kristin5792, and robinsuesanders for telling me about Invisalign. Unfortunately, my orthodontist said that it made no sense to get Invisalign at this stage (since I have been wearing braces for 5 years…). I’m also unsure if I should ask my parents for more money (as my summer earnings are not nearly enough to pay for Invisalign) when they’re already dishing out a hefty amount for college, and when the economy is doing so poorly…</p>
<p>To kristin5792, I’ve already finished my freshman year of college with braces, so I’m not really that concerned about my looks. I’m just worried about sleep deprivation and other complications, which might very well occur given the design of the positioner.</p>
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<p>But I’ve been wearing braces for 5 years, so I really don’t think I’m getting my braces off earlier than usual. My teeth weren’t that misaligned to begin with either. I wonder why my orthodontist won’t just give me a retainer.</p>
<p>Weird your orthodontist is wanting to have you wear a positioner, then. I was definitely an early case (my teeth had not finished moving and I was still growing). My braces went on when I was about 7 or 8 and came off when I was about 12 or 13 (I just remember it was third grade to seventh grade). I think my orthodontist justified his choice because I had all my adult teeth by third grade… however, that was my dentist’s fault for pulling nine of my teeth (eight molars, one incisor) by the time I reached that age. No, there was no reason for any of the extractions. I’m convinced at this point I was a guinea pig for both orthodontist and dentist =/</p>
<p>The only saving grace I see is he’s only asking you to wear it for four hours a day. Mine wanted me to wear it “whenever I was not eating or brushing my teeth.” Invisalign is really pricey and if you have so little movement left, maybe a positioner might be worth suffering through for a few months. That is if it is only four hours. To avoid any sleep problems (since you mentioned you’re a mouth breather like me when you sleep), do not wear it to bed. I really don’t see what four hours is going to do, though. I wore mine as much as possible for the first few months and my entire bottom row of teeth moved out of alignment as well as one top tooth.</p>
<p>Good luck ):. Positioners are terrible devices and I hope another option can be found. If not, it’s only until December and only for four hours a day. It could always be worse.</p>
<p>You should discuss all other viable options with your dentist. You need to ask him why he thinks that this is the best option for you. Perhaps he has limited experience with invisalign and is just more comfortable with positioners. </p>
<p>I know several people who have had invisalign braces. Each pair is used for about two weeks and then you need to start using the next pair. It could be that your dentist believes a positioner is a more cost-effective choice for you since you only need one, not something like eight sets to get you through the next four months.</p>