My Invisalign Journey - the impressions, photos and xray

I'm not exactly on track when it comes to updating my Invisalign journey on here, far from it right now. It's now December the 13th and my appointment for my impressions, photos and xray was on November the 26th (I've had two more appointments since then).

I love discovering blogs where people share their journey and experiences on anything really so I'm hoping to help someone understand the journey. I'm going to break down each little part of this appointment to explain what happened so you know what to expect.

The impressions...
  I was a little unsure about these, I did try to do a little bit of researching online (Invisalign is now my favourite hashtag to search for on Instagram, amazing results!) to see what I could find out about it really. I didn't learn alot, I just saw a few people taking selfies whilst having their impressions taken. I've absolutely no idea why they'd want to be taking selfies, I wanted that thing out of my mouth as soon as. I didn't want to think about taking a selfie or two.

My legs kept randomly shaking in the morning before my appointment. But I was a mix of nervous and excited. I've learnt with anxiety that emotions and physical symptoms run around in circles chasing each other but once you've worked through the worse of them, it does get easier.

The impressions are basically like a mold of your teeth.
How do you get these impressions?
Think gum shield with a handle, like a mini frying pan. Filled with gunky putty that sets after about 3 minutes. The putty isn't pleasant, neither is the gum shield frying pan (I'm sure there is a technical and official name for this) in your mouth! At this stage the advice I would give is focus on your breathing. It's fairly easy to panic a little at this point, I did. Admittedly it is pretty tricky to focus on your breathing with a gum shield frying pan in your mouth, I'm starting to think this is just called a tray.

If you're having Invisalign on both your top and bottom teeth that's a total of 6 glorious minutes with the putty and gum shield frying pan/tray in your mouth...yuck! But just think of your final improved smile.

If you have a big mouth you might find the impression taking easier. I struggled because my mouth is small but apparently that doesn't affect the noise that comes out of it...well some people clearly know me quite well.

The impressions might take a couple of attempts, luckily mine didn't. But my dentist still liked to trick me and told me I needed to do them again. Thankfully he has a sense of humor and makes the whole experience better. Laughter makes everything better right?


The photos...
  I don't exactly think they take much explaining. My dentist just took photos of my teeth from different angles to send off with my impressions. At this point I never knew my mouth could stretch so much, I had these two big plastic hooks (you can see them in the photo below) to keep my mouth open and to pull my cheeks away from my teeth to get a proper view. I'm not going to include all the photos in here, I'm going to leave them til the final post so I can fully compare the difference. I love looking at peoples before and after photos. I obviously don't have any after photos yet but I'm going to have to throw in some before photos so we all know what we are dealing with here.

photo my dentist took to send to Invisalign

before my Invisalign journey begins

my current 'smile'

The xray...
  They take an xray of your teeth to determine the movement of your teeth and to check for any teeth that could be hiding under the surface. To take the xray I had to stand in a room and bite on a little piece of plastic, then the machine went around my head taking an xray that looks like this...


As my dentist said, imagine someone has taken your smile and rolled it out with a big rolling pin.


Impressions, photos and xray taken...on to the next step, the ClinCheck (that's already happened I just need to write about it)!


Have you ever had Invisalign? or are you considering it? I wanna know! :)

3 comments

  1. exciting times! i think you have a lovely smile by the way. x

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    1. It sure is! :) I'm a mixture of nervous and excited as it's getting closer to the day of starting them!

      Awww, thanks Christina :)

      I've not seen your smile in a while :( only emoji version, I want a tweet with your smile in non emoji form :) hehe! <3 xxx

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  2. My wife wants me to get braces for my crooked teeth, but I have been hesitant. I'm not really afraid of the process, so she said I should do some online research to see what it involves. Your post is very helpful, and it gives me a good idea of what I will face. Thank you for making it easier for me to start my own journey.

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