Give Me Some Space!

About a year ago at the dentist they discovered that Matthew had an underbite(?) I'm not sure what they really call it, his bottom teeth stuck out farther than the top teeth except in front so looking at him you couldn't tell but if you pulled his cheeks back you could see it on the sides. This gave him a mildly chipmunky look to his face since the bottom of his cheeks puffed out a tad but you probably wouldn't really notice this unless you looked closely. Anyway, his top teeth were starting to push on those bottom teeth and slant them inward causing lots of space issues for those poor bottom teeth. So they determined he needed a spacer to spread out the roof of his mouth and make it so those top teeth are in the right position and also help those bottom teeth get back to where they need to be. Its been a long process with all the banding and molding and consulting and such but the big day finally arrived and they put the spacer in Matthew's mouth, poor thing. Can you imagine having such a contraption in your mouth? It seems way more worse than braces. After we got into the car he was saying that he couldn't swallow and I hadn't even thought about that, he can't put his tongue on the roof of his mouth to swallow. He was trying so hard and kind of gagging. He's now figuring out how to suck it in really fast. Right after his appointment he had scouts and they got a little snack size hershey bar for their treat and it took him over 30 minutes to eat it, I told him that was the longest it has ever taken him to eat a candy bar! He can hardly eat a thing, he only had two bites of cereal before he decided he couldn't eat that so then he just sucked on a go-gurt. I'm hoping he gets the hang of it soon or he'll be skin and bones. One interesting thing they said is that it might help his nasal problems because spreading that bone will help to open that passage up. I found this fascinating since he has suffered with nasal problems since he was two, we always just thought it was allergies but this gives me new hope that he won't have to deal with that for the rest of his life. Here's to hoping he can survive the next 3 weeks of spreading that bone and then the next year or so that he has to have this thing in his mouth.


Check out how green his eyes are in this picture, I just thought it was cool because I'm always saying how interesting his eyes are and how they seem to change color to what he is wearing and then I saw this picture!