Fun with retainers.

[mary oregon]

Okay, my friend and I have both recently gotten braces off. We both have bonded permanent lower retainers. She has a clear upper one and I actually have both a clear one and now a hawley. We went out for dinner tonight with a couple of friends and we got to laughing about the whole retainer thing. We both have had some major speech problems with our retainers. I just got the hawley retainer today so let me just tell you it does effect your speech.... more than a little.

We both have our lower bonded retaiiner to all six front lowers. Because the bonding is not smooth, but rather matte in finish, she told me it reminded her of resting your tongue against a rough seashell all day, like a sand dollar. Euuuuu! Then we laughed about how you have to decide where to rest your tongue... just under it or just above, each resulting in very different speech, yet equally amusing.

Now... for the whopper of speech difficulties.. the hawley retainer is a major speech problem here. My friend was telling me to say some hawley retainer tongue twisters like... Suffering Succotach, or I taw I taw a putty tat or the holiday favorite... Happy Hannukah. Of course most of those were accompanied by much laughter and resulting in much extra split and drool.

Truly the worst part of the upper retainer for me is that it is making my gag reflex go crazy. If I talk to much and my upper part of my throat gets too dry I start to gag on the retainer. I wonder if this will go away or if I'm just unusual? I've gagged many times today. I'm really hoping this will subside.


For now... my Spheech is Schlightly Effechted and I'm drooling like the day I got my braces on. My ortho says I'll be wearing the upper hawley full time for at least for several months and then 12 hours forever, so I hope the gagging does go away.