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Emily Maynard recapped her 2020 ups and downs on her Instagram Story and revealed that she had Bell’s palsy while pregnant with her fifth child, Magnolia Belle.
The former “Bachelorette” star, 34, shared a photo of herself lying down and wearing an eye mask in September 2020, a month before welcoming her baby girl.
“I had Bell’s palsy and had to wear a patch,” Maynard wrote in the photo, which she shared publicly for the first time on New Years Day.
Symptoms of Bell’s palsy include muscle weakness, drooling, twitching, paralysis, and a droopy eyelid or corner of the mouth, according to the Mayo Clinic. The condition often occurs quickly and is triggered when a nerve in the face becomes swollen or inflamed.
Maynard said she previously had Bell’s palsy in high school. The condition can occur at any age and for most people it is temporary.
“I had it in high school and I’m lucky to be one of the few people to have it twice,” she wrote on her Instagram story. “It started with a headache that gradually got worse and entered my jaw. I thought it was an ear infection, but woke up one morning and couldn’t spit my toothpaste or mascara. I knew exactly what it was, so the doctor prescribed me a steroid. “
Maynard said she wasn’t sure what caused her Bell’s paralysis, but that it “got worse before it got better.” Every morning she said she would wake up and “run to the mirror to see if I could wink or whistle”.
“I thought I was 34, I was free from the vanity I cherished so much in my 20s, but there is something very humiliating about being 9 months pregnant and unable to move half of your face!” she said. “I cried a lot and felt horrible, but luckily it got better day by day.”
Maynard and her husband Tyler Johnson have been married since 2014. Along with newborn baby Magnolia Belle, they are parents to sons Jennings, 5, Gibson, 4, and Gatlin, 2. Maynard also has a 15-year-old daughter, Josephine, with the late racing pilot Ricky Hendrick, who died in a plane crash in 2004.
Despite her prominent social media presence, the Bachelor Nation fan favorite chose to keep her pregnancy a secret and only announced it days before her daughter was born last October. Maynard also addressed his reasoning on Friday.
“Lots of questions why I chose not to tell people about my pregnancy: Honestly, no real answer or plan,” she wrote. “A lot of things were going on in the world back then and social media / news gave me anxiety so I never put on Instagram. After a while we decided that this would be fun to surprise everyone with a new baby! “
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