10 months out

There hasn't been much to report the last few months, but I had a couple of interesting things this week.  First a positive progression!  I forgot my lunch knife one day this week and decided to try actually biting into an apple without cutting it up first.  It worked!  It has been YEARS since I have been able to eat an apple without "pre-planning."  I'm not going to lie, that first bite was hard! My jaw opening felt incredibly inadequate and it felt a bit like I was just nibbling on the apple for those first general bites, but I did it! My first apple in [I have no idea] how many years!
Of course I followed it with some further difficult to eat food (almonds!, chewy bread! candy!) which all resulted in some increased jaw soreness for the last couple of days, but it was totally worth it.

My first bite was MUCH smaller than this one!!

The soreness I have at the moment, does remind me that I should get back into my daily jaw stretches, which I tapered off doing a couple of months ago out of laziness... whoops!

I also saw my orthodontist this week for my 3 month retainer follow-up. I am diligently wearing my retainers 24/7 except to eat or brush.  Every so often when I start snacking on weekends I forget and go a couple hours without wearing them, but for the most part I'd say I'm actually wearing them 90-95% of the time.  I want to do everything I can to help maintain all the work that has been done in my mouth!!

I think that I forgot to mention a few months ago when I got my braces off I also had a dental cleaning that resulted in a lot of gum/tooth pain in the front of my mouth.  It turns out that with all the work I've had done in my mouth these last few years my (already inadequate) gum line over my lower 2 front teeth has receded to the point of uselessness and now I am getting some fun nerve-like pain. My dentist referred me to a periodontist who told me that I need to have a gum graft.  Of course he can't do the procedure when I'm pregnant so its on hold for the moment.  I also wanted to get Dr. R's opinion, since as far as I'm concerned he is the guru of all things involving my mouth!  Dr. R agreed and told me that the Periodontist I saw is the one that he recommends...so probably February-ish I'll be having one more (hopefully) minor last procedure on my mouth for a looooong time!


I'll update with a pic later, but I'm also eight months pregnant and its starting to show in my face! :-0