UPDATED: Coping with middle age

This has been a rough year in many ways but I'm going to focus on the purely superficial.  I turned 40 a little while back and let's say I've noticed some things about the way I look that could use some improvement.

    - My teeth have shifted and yellowed which is of course why I'm back in aligners.

    - I've gained weight in my abdominal area and things just don't fit the way they used to.  

    - My eyesight is changing and I'll likely need reading glasses soon.

    - My skin is doing weird things and I've developed some dry patches.

    - The greys in my hair are getting more obvious and I've not been to a hair dresser in months.

Thankfully I'm still generally healthy and while I realize the above is pretty typical as we get older.  I don't like it and am trying to address all of the above in different ways.  I've never been super confident about my appearance but working from home in the spring really shifted my attention to my teeth as I watched myself on video conference calls and my waist line as I initially lost then gained weight during the early days of the pandemic.

Now that I'm in the office again, it's a bit tricky dealing with the Invisalign hygiene.  In my work building, each floor has bathrooms with stalls and shared sink space.  Not the most comfortable for spreading out my toothbrushing gear during my first go around but even trickier in a pandemic environment where I need to be extra careful about how I place my things, there being a limit of people in the bathroom and not wanting to gross people out at the same time!  What I've been typically doing is taking the elevators (extra slow due to limits on how many people can go in) to the main floor and brushing my teeth in a private bathroom there hoping that no one else is waiting.  I try to keep it to one per day but twice at most.

The flip side of using the private bathroom for toothbrushing is that I'm not eating all day in my office like I did before.  I do however end up eating and sometimes/often (?) overeating at lunch in order to get through the rest of the day without needing to eat and brush again.  It's been a bit of a balancing act as I try to figure out just how much food to pack and avoid throwing out leftovers.  Initially I was packing way too much food, especially perishables.  In the past couple of days, I've been peckish by the end of the day so I may need to readjust again.  It's a learning process definitely!   

One thing I have to say is that while I enjoyed working in yoga pants, t's kind of fun to dress up for work again and I did buy myself some nice things (over the spring, summer and into the fall...) online (basics, accent pieces, shoes, you name it!) but I've been really conscious of my waistline and how my pants and skirts fit.   I've always been slim and petite with a squarish figure but now there's just a bit of bulge in the middle that is unsightly to me.  So as a result, in addition to adjusting my food intake I'm trying as hard as I can to find time to exercise regularly.  But here's the thing - that's not always enough in your 40!  Plus I love my wardrobe, I have some great investment pieces and I really don't to want to go up a size.  I'm also frugal and don't want to spend money needlessly.    

Anyhow, it's hard being in my 40s, back in invisalign, trying to keep my weight in check and not get sick.  Add to that taking care of my family during COVID, including 2 school aged kids, maintaining some order in our house, trying to stay in touch with friends and extended family, reading, and keeping up at a demanding but meaningful job and some days it just seems like too much.  But then I have to remind myself that self care is important too and I've really been neglecting myself since I've had kids.  And if I it makes me feel better to invest some time in improving my appearance, that's ok too.  Because when I feel good about myself, I'm more likely to be at my best and giving my best to those around me ; it's an example to my kids that I might have some responsibilities to them that I take seriously but I also have things I do just for myself too.

I know I have so much to be grateful for in my life. I am also aware that there are so many important things going on including COVID that are of importance socially and politically on a large scale.  Having said that I am glad to have this simple straightforward goal for myself of straightening out my teeth again using these aligners that I kept from so many years ago.  I'm really looking forward to the day when we are out of our masks and being out and about with straight bright little teeth.  In the mean time, I'll keep posting progress photos here :)

UPDATE October 9/2020:

So one thing I realized is how important it is to control my fibre and water intake.  Now I'm not fluctuating so much between pant sizes and looking 4 most pregnant periodically- phew!  On top of that, I think I've mastered the art of packing food for the day when I go to work.  Not much food wasted, with minimal hungriness at the end of the day.  As for my hair, I discovered a new shampoo from Sally's that I love (it smells like apples!) which means my hair isn't so frizzy all the time.  I may just let the grey hair blend in for now.  Between that, a little bit of wardrobe updating and dealing with the teeth, I think I have managed to keep the forty-something frumps at bay for now!

 

UPDATED: An inspiration photo - (with more pictures!)

 As I flipped through my old blog posts, one thing I realized was that I had never posted an after photo once I was finished with my third set of refinements and into my retainer way back in 2011.  Well, there happens to be a good reason for that which is that I found out I was pregnant just at that very same time.  As a result, following the progress of my teeth took second fiddle to sorting out a baby room, prenatal vitamins, lab test, sharing the news and all that good stuff.

Anyhow, at some point I stopped taking regular close up photos of my teeth.  The best I can do is from a selfie I took during a trip I took with a good friend in the fall of 2011.  Here's hoping I can get my teeth to a similar state by the time I'm all done - again!

***Update - October 9/2020:

I had a bit of time to dig around in my old computer today.  It reinforced my suspicion that I didn't take a round of photos after I was done with Invisalign.  Though I found many pregnancy progress photos.  Not reposting those here!  I did find some smiling photos that are a bit clearer than the previous one I posted from this period:

This was taken during refinement round 2 - you can still see the attachments, taken in summer of 2010

Based on time, this was half way through refinement round 3, you can see a few gaps, taken early fall 2011

Taken after refinements round 3, February 2012

Taken after refinements round 3, October 2011

Taken after refinements round 3 with tray on, October 2011

So as you can see, my teeth were never "perfect" after round three but if that's as good as it gets for my case, I'm happy to go back to it.  One thing that's interesting to me is that I'm sure if my front right tooth and it's neighbour to my right ever fully aligned.  Will have to see how they look at the end of this process.

It's been nearly 10 years and I'm back again!

I didn't expect to be here again yet here I am.  Of course there are a lot of things that I wasn't expecting in the year 2020.  I plan to share a little bit more of the details over the next few weeks as I take some time to reflect but here are the high/lowlights of my post braces life:

- still married and with two kids now both in school

- have been working full time outside of maternity leave so its been a busy 10 years

-  have worn both a wire and multiple essix retainers regularly and have broken a number of them over the years

- have seen some regression since being in retainers and been somewhat unhappy about it over the last year or two.

- the last time a retainer broke and I went to see my dentist he suggested I try Vivera retainers.  When I mentioned I still had my old trays.  He suggested I try cleaning my old retainers and popping them back in before we do a new mold.  

- I really want this right so I went back to the beginning of my final refinements (6U+ 3 overcorrection trays) so it'll take me a few months to get through them all.  I've also purchased some whitening gel so looking forward to having a straighter and whiter smile again soon.

One thing I'll note is that brushing my teeth as a middle aged working mother, while working in a senior role in an office tower during a pandemic, keeping up with the invisalign hygiene is way different then the first time when I started this process in my late 20s.  It's brutal and takes so much more discipline.  I sometimes think, if only I had started this process when I was still working at home several months ago. But then again, nothing ever came of coulda woulda shoulda.  I'm back here now and I'm going to just get it done.

My teeth at the beginning of this "reboot".  Not as bad as at the beginning of treatment but leaves some room for improvement!

Life after Invasalign

It's been over a year since I've finished my Invisalign treatment and a pretty eventful one at that!  In terms of my treatment, I wore my retainers faithfully full time for about another 6 months or so.  They weren't the most comfortable but I've gotten used to them.  Sometimes I just wore my last Invisalign tray because it was less visible.  At one point I was going to go back to Dr. A to have my retainer checked out a my teeth looked a bit out of alignment but never got around to it.

In other news, one of the reasons why I haven't been updating and replying to comments is because late last year I found out I was pregnant!  Since then, we have had a baby boy who is over 7 months now and both my husband and I are quite smitten with him.  Especially in the early weeks, post partum it was really difficult to remember to brush my teeth let alone floss and put in my retainer but I've gotten back into the swing of things since then and where my retainer eery night now.

Anyhow, my apologies if I haven't replied to your comments as promptly as I normally would.  It's nothing personal!

In retainers .... finally

What can I say? It's been a long long time coming...

Since my last post I've finished refinement 3. I've had indentations made in my final refinement tray 3. I've waited and waited and waited and am now finally in retainers. They're a bit bulky and awkward and I am told I need to wear them full time for the next month and only nightly after that. I've cheated a little given that I was in my last set of invisalign for so long so I don't always brush after lunch but I do wear them somewhere in the range of 18 hours per day.

I will post pics when I get a chance...

Looking on the up and up

Since my last post, my gaps are slowly closing and teeth are looking a bit more even. When I saw Dr. A at tray 4, he suggested we could always go to refinements 4 if needed (which made me feel hopeful yet slightly depressed because this is taking much longer than anticipated). Last Friday when I came in for a check up (tray 6), I took a good long look at my current teeth as well as photos from my last round. I have to admit they seem to have changed only a little and my front tooth is still a bit crooked. It's a world of difference from when I first started though! Dr. A wasn't quite as keen about refinements round 4 when I mentioned it. Instead, he suggested we at least go through my last three over correction trays first. To be honest, I'm pretty ready to just finish up and get on with my life at this point.

Anyhow, I've been a bit lax about taking photos lately but it's partly because my teeth haven't changed very much visually. Will post pictures at the end of this round!

Getting worse before it gets better...

I've been pretty quiet basically because not much has been going on with my teeth. They were getting a bit gappy for a little bit after tray 3 but I figured it was some of that getting worse before it gets better stuff. I see Dr. A tomorrow so will update on where I'm at after that.