Crossbite in children

[momof2inohio]

My DS has a crossbite. His dentist has told us since he was 7 he needs to go to the orthodontist but we decided to wait until all of his baby teeth were out. He is now 12 and I am going to schedule him for his consulation.

My question is...what do they usually do for a crossbite? Is it always braces or can they do something else for it? We luckily have dental insurance but it is still going to cost us quite a bit for braces and the visits.

[Gertie2u]

We went through the crossbite thing with two daughters in two different cities and lemme give you some hm I hate to say advice but maybe observations on the differences we experienced.

Dentist number 1 was old school. We took DD #1 at 10-and-a-half as she didn't seem to be loosing many of her baby teeth. He did x-rays and showed us how the adult teeth were being forced to come in weird because the baby teeth were hanging in there and it was something you could completely see. Normally the adult tooth causes the baby tooth root to degrade and then pushes the baby tooth so that it becomes loose, falls out, and the adult tooth comes in to fill the space. Since the baby teeth were refusing to exit in the normal manner, probably due to misalignment he said, teeth had ended up where they didn't belong. He had us have all her baby teeth pulled. One side one week, the other side I think about 3 weeks later. As it turned out, they were not hard at all to pull as the roots were partially degraded. She really had little swelling or pain, surprisingly. That dentist put bands on the teeth remaining - I think about 8 front teeth and a couple of back molars - and we went in monthly for him to make sure the teeth she had stayed where they were pretty much until all the new adult teeth came in. That took about a year and a half. About 10 months in, he did a new set of x-rays trying to figure out why only 2 new adult teeth had emerged and saw that her adult teeth were developing, just not in a hurry. We decided to wait some more and right at the 18 month mark, they seemed to all pop in at once. She did the same thing getting her teeth originally as an infant, so I think that was just her. Late and all at once.

The dentist banded each new adult tooth as it came in fully and started holding in place, too. It took a further 14 months for him to use the braces to move her teeth around once everybody was in the pool, so to speak. He then left the braces on two months, tightening them weekly, to let the teeth get set in place. All together, she had braces for pretty much 3 years, although we'd been told 20 months at the start. After that, she was supposed to wear retainers upper and lower at night for the rest of her life. She's married and lives with her hubby in another state. I just saw the retainers in her old room. We used to go up and make her put them in at bedtime. In the morning, they'd be laying on her end table. She always claimed to have them in most of the night. I'd say good luck if this is the plan you go with. Kids will find a way to avoid what they wanna avoid, and I gotta admit those things look pretty torturous. That orthodontist told us it would have been much easier had we brought her in earlier, so....

DD#2 was 8 when we took her in. Once again, x-rays showed teeth in amazing contortions to come in around baby teeth that weren't vacating. We were a little surprised as DD#2 had lost several more baby teeth than DD#1 ever lost prior to the great teeth pulling incident. Once again, dates were set to have all baby teeth removed. DD#2 spent much of her time trying to wriggle the baby teeth, and amazingly managed to get 3 out this way. The rest were pulled in two batches.

The new doctor had new-fangled ideas of which we were a tad uncertain. According to him, he could move her teeth much faster and if she did certain exercises with an oral therapist I think she was called, she would actually learn to swallow in such a manner her mouth actions would encourage her teeth into place. This would also mean less retainer wear. Although we were skeptical, research online led me to find plenty of statistical backup for the general idea correcting tongue thrust when swallowing would at least improve her overbite long term situation, if not the crossbite, which he thought was only the result of recalcitrant baby teeth. We were told to expect to be in treatment for 18-20 months.

DD#2's adult teeth rapidly appeared after the pulling of the baby teeth. When we went back to the ortho one month following the final removal of baby teeth, he was able to band almost all adult teeth. At that point, she'd been going for weekly therapy sessions for six weeks. The therapist seemed happy with her progress, although I knew she was only doing her exercises about half the time. Due to my job, I was only able to sit with her and run through the exercises about half the time, and I knew she didn't do them properly if at all the nights I was not present to oversee. *sigh* Anyways, finally we had the braces on and he began the process of shoving her teeth around by tightening elastic bands weekly, then bi-weekly. We were still seeing the therapist weekly, at a wopping $70 per visit. We ended up seeing her for 15 weeks straight, then twice after that for checkups. DD#2 wore her braces 21 months. The last several he made a lot of noise about 'lining up the two arches just right', but I couldn't really tell any change from month to month. He'd make a big deal of having his assistant and I examine things, and we'd make agreeable noises. As soon as he was happy with things, he removed the bands and fitted her with a permanent retaining bar on the bottom and removable retainer for the top.

Again with the make her put in at night, come in and find it on the table in the am. We went back after six weeks as scheduled and he was upset her teeth had moved. I thought it was the not letting them set after finished, personally, but didn't say anything. He charged me $20 a month for 3 months to make her those invisible braces. Those things turn out to be just clear plastic trays they somehow make by first casting the teeth in a lot of gooey plastic stuff, then using the cast to set clear plastic trays which by some magic are slightly more aligned than your actual teeth, thus push them to the new location required. We were sent back to the therapist as it was claimed she was not swallowing properly was the error. I guess there was something to it as we did 4 more appointments spread out over the 3 months, and her teeth have stayed lined up pretty well since then. Even though she never wears her removable retainer. She's nearly 18 now.

Lastly, they probably won't say this, but you should make plans to take your child for teeth cleaning every 3 months. If you have dental insurance, they will only pay for I think one per year and you'll have to cover the rest. Both ortho only suggested one cleaning every 6 months, which is what we did with DD#1. She did brush her teeth as instructed and we did our best for her to floss, which is a pain with the braces on. She ended up with some darkening around where the bands had been despite all this. With DD#2, the dentist more or less polished up around them with his tiny tools of super clean every three months, and we were much happier with the result. We paid for a whitening kit for DD#1, and those things did the trick, but were a bit of a mess. And the extra cost - think the two trays and 4 tubes of prescription strength whitening was $70-ish. Stuff is a higher percentage peroxide vs what you can buy in the stores even now, and white strips didn't exist back then.