"Your tongue is your own worse enemy.........."

The title of this post is what I told Tanner yesterday as I was explaining to her what the Orthodontist said.

You know how we're doing all this work on Tanner's mouth, right? And remember how I told you that we went because it looked as if Tanner's lower jaw was sticking out more than her upper jaw? Well get this.............

(Aunt Janece, you'll really be fascinated with this!)

Her jaw positioning is good. Her TONGUE has forced her front two bottom teeth to start laying over and separating. Seriously, instead of her front two teeth on the bottom standing up big and proud, they are now tilted forward, with a gap starting to form, even with the braces on her teeth!!!

I about fell over. In fact I asked the Dr more than once to make sure I understood it right. Did you know that your tongue produces six pounds of pressure on your teeth! Seriously! Who knew!!??

Because her tongue has never been able to fit in her mouth until now, it's used to resting on her bottom lip. When she swallows, she swallows backwards (tongue thrust) which is completely opposite of how she's supposed to swallow. This pressure on her front teeth have caused this new problem of her teeth laying over.

So what do we do?

I'm so glad you asked...........................

On May 16 we'll go to a Speech Therapist for an initial evaluation and will go from there. Cheri (the Speech Therapist) is specially trained in tongue thrust therapy, which is good. Tanner will have to go once a week for 12-15 weeks. Cheri will give her exercises to do that will help retrain her tongue and will build up the muscles around her lips and face that she's not really used until now.

There is a device thing (tongue bumper I think is the correct name) that the Ortho could put in that would poke her tongue every time it tried to be outside of her mouth, but when I asked him about this, he said he doesn't' like to go that route because he feels like it's inhumane treatment. He prefers going the speech therapy route first and using the tongue bumper as a last resort.

We tried speech therapy about five or six years ago, but stopped it because it wasn't doing any good since she slept with her mouth open and her tongue hanging out 8 hours a night when she sleeps. Because of the shape of her jaw and the size of her mouth in regards to her tongue, she has a mild breathing obstruction. Sleeping with her mouth open is her body's defense mechanism. Now that we've moved things around and expanded her pallate everything fits, it's just a matter of retraining her little brain. After the braces are off, the Ortho will fit her with some sort of clamp (that's my term, not the Ortho's) device to wear at night and that will prevent her mouth from opening while she sleeps.

Speech therapy is going to be an EXPENSIVE adventure for us, due to our insurances not having great coverage for this type of service. In comparison to what we've already spent on her mouth though (by time it's all said and done, we'll be reaching approximately $15,000!), another $1200 isn't that big of a deal in my book! I would hate to not do the therapy and then have everything we've done up to this point be a waste of time and money.

Tanner is supposed to go to camp at the beach this summer with her Dad's church and I'm hoping and praying that she'll still be able to go, despite the chunk of money we are about to have to shell out. We'll see how that goes.

We will do whatever we have to do in order for Tanner to get the help that she needs. After all, it's gonna be SO WORTH IT in the end.

I can't wait to see the finished project!