I had them as a kid. I thought they were super cool, and really fascinating, but I was usually more interested in what was going on around me in the ortho's office than what was in my own mouth. The office was open so I could see all the other patients being worked on at the same time as me, and I remember very vividly there being a big poster on the wall of different colors and patterns that a bionator could be made in. I never got to have a bionator
I barely remember what my own braces looked like on me or even what they felt like, except that my mouth was very sore when I got them on and I wore an expander on my top jaw that would leave an impression on my tongue over night. If I ever ran my tongue over my brackets, I don't remember doing it and wish I could remember what it felt like!
My expander was attached with molar bands, and I had four brackets on my front teeth. I am old enough that I remember some of my classmates having bands on all of their lower teeth and brackets on only their top fronts, but I only ever had those four brackets. They were connected with a bare wire to the tubes on my molar bands, and those tubes have left permanent scars on the insides of my cheeks! They have been off for 25 years and the scars are still there!
I had an underbite, but I was a pretty little kid and the expander did exactly what it was supposed to do and fixed it. It was not the kind of expander that required a key, though, it was just a really powerful spring. It hurt for quite a while after I got it but eventually I forgot about it even being there. I don't remember if it effected my speech but if it did I never noticed. I always thought my front teeth must have been crooked, but looking at pictures of myself pre-braces I don't think they were. I think they split apart from having my palate expanded, and the braces brought them back together, because I do remember having a huge gap between my front teeth and my lateral incisors getting pushed up a little. This was after my treatment started though.
After I got them off, I had a regular wire retainer that I wore pretty much like I was supposed to, except for the two times I lost it after lunch at school, but either I wasn't really ready to get the braces off or the retainer wasn't the right kind, because after a few months my parents noticed my front teeth moving backward and the orthodontist said yep, they definitely moved! We could put the braces back on...
I was really bummed because I was enjoying finally being able to eat candy and chew gum again! But I ended up with a new retainer that had springs behind my front teeth, and, after a few years, I was done with that too. It has long since stopped fitting, but not because my teeth have moved back, just because I was a kid then and my mouth is adult-sized now.
I only ever needed that treatment, nothing else, and my teeth are very straight and my bite is very aligned. However, in my profile, my chin sticks out and my upper jaw is short. I have always wondered if I was supposed to have something else done, or if not getting the braces back on wasn't the right thing to do, or if some people's faces just look like this and it's not really related to anything an orthodontist could do and its more in the realm of plastic surgery.
When I'm bored I like to make up elaborate stories in my head of an alternate timeline where once I was a little older, I went back to the orthodontist for my "real" treatment (like I know many people did - many of my classmates had a little bit of braces in elementary school and then had "real" braces and etc for several years in middle and high school) and this fictional treatment would of course include a facemask.
