We found out last year that Nia would need braces. We intended to start in D.C., but she still had some baby teeth that needed to come out and the Orthodontist wasn’t keen to put on the braces and not be able to see it through to the end (we had max 1 year in D.C. and braces are usually on 18 months to two years). Thankfully, there was a good Orthodontist in Almaty that the Consulate recommended, so as soon as we arrived in Almaty, one of the first things I did was make our Ortho Consult. We did that in week two and were fortunate to get in for the braces fitting a week later.
I figured y’all would be curious about what an Orthodontist office looked like in Kazakhstan, so I made sure and get some photos. Here’s the modern-looking lobby.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how modern the equipment was. To me, it looked exactly like what we have in the U.S. The only hiccup was that neither the Orthodontist nor his assistant spoke English. This would have been trickly to navigate, but may have been possible with heavy usage of Google Translate. We didn’t need to go that route though, because the Consulate graciously sent a translator with us. That was very unexpected and such a blessing, as it made the whole process go so much more smoothly. It also calmed Mommy and Nia’s nerves a lot having someone there who knew what was going on.
Neither Nick or I ever had braces, so I was very curious to see how this all went down. First, they took out an adorable little kit that had all the braces allotted by tooth number. They put that right on Nia’s chest, along with the tools, which struck me as odd but efficient (and yes, they stayed there for the entire hour and a half process of putting them on).
Next they put in this funky mouth-expander so they could have better access to her teeth. It looked pretty uncomfortable, but she was a champ about it.
They had already done a thorough cleaning, so now it was time to glue the braces on. It was very intricate. I’m not sure I would have had the patience!
After the individual braces were put on, they ran the wire through all of them. I couldn’t get a very close look at how the wire was fastened, but it appeared like it threaded through the channel in each brace and was then secured in place by the band that went on top.
I love a good before and after picture, so here’s your look at Nia right before she went in.
And here we are immediately after.
She was super nervous but did great for the whole thing. She was in a lot of pain for the first few days, but is getting more used to them each day. For the next two weeks, Nia’s diet will consist of mostly soup, smoothies, yogurt and any other soft foods we can identify.
My favorite thing about this experience was how affordable braces are here. The application of the braces was $700, and all the remaining visits (one a month for 18 months) will cost around $300-400, making the whole thing less than $1100 (this is the total price, not the price after insurance). Isn’t that amazing? Hopefully we’ll end up with a great final result in 18 months!
