I had a girlfriend with braces & she wore rubber bands too. Having umm, you know that “kind of sex” with those bands on sucks, oh I made a pun.
Handy, I’ll happily point you towards any of the numerous and much more appropriate funky sex threads for you to share similar little nuggets of wisdom. There’re plenty of opportunities in them to get that post count up to 20k. Sheesh.
I had braces for two and a half years, from somewhere in age 12 to somewhere in age 14. It was not a traumatic event.
I did have to stop eating a few things, most notably apples and corn on the cob (in fact, the whole family stopped eating the corn on the cob for the entire time because I was so miserable watching them eat it without me. Now THAT’S love!)
There was definitely some pain for a day or two after tightening but tylenol and soup took care of that. The pain amounts did vary from month to month–sometimes it hardly bothered me, sometimes it was so bad it made me cry, co be prepared for that.
Before getting the braces, I had to have four adult teeth pulled because my mouth is too small (now I only have 24 teeth) I also had to have the widening device put in the roof of my mouth near the end. (This was a spring like thing that they called something like a “quadrihelix” because it had four different loops in it.) I had a permanent indentation into my tongue from this thing for a long time, but it’s gone now. Fabulous place for food to get caught–water pik helped for that.
Funny story: I had my first “real” boyfriend at 14, while I still had the braces and the “quadrihelix”. When it came time for our first “french” kiss, I kept backing off and wouldn’t do it. Finally, I had my best friend explain to his best friend that I was afraid of him getting his tongue hurt or caught on this stupid thing in my mouth. It was so embarassing and horrible…but the boyfriend was sweet. He sent the message back that he “had a tough tongue” and not to be embarassed. Anyway, be glad your daughter’s not 14 with all this orthodontic stuff! Can’t really ask the doc what the best way to kiss with braces is. 