Herbst issues

Saturday morning, Nicklas woke up and realized his Herbst on one side of his mouth was unattached from his top tooth. Yikes! After a call to the emergeny line for Dr. Henderson's office, we were able to schedule an appointment to get it reattached. When I took him in, they asked if we had the screw for the attachment. Um, no. They concluded that he must have swallowed it in his sleep.

Check out this photo. Can you see the rod hanging out?
 

How about this one? He clearly wasn't happy to be hanging out at the orthodontist on a Saturday morning!

When you sign your orthodontist contract, you read all this bolded and underlined text about not eating, drinking, chewing, poking, pulling, prodding your appliance to prevent breakage of any sort. We were told that they will do three repairs free of charge and after that, you have to pay for any repairs. Since we're only in month 1 out of 24, I was worried. Luckily, this incident wasn't Nick's fault so we didn't have to use one of our three strikes. Overall, Nicklas hasn't seemed bothered by his Herbst. Other than having trouble eating the first day and the rod becoming unattached this weekend, it hasn't been a problem. He has to brush his teeth after every meal and this has actually been a good thing. It's helped allieviate his bad breath so I know his teeth are actually cleaner than previously. I'm so thankful that he has his Herbst before getting braces - I think it will make the transition a little bit better. I'm really proud of how well he's doing with the situation.