Emily Maynard repeated her highs and lows of 2020 in her Instagram story, revealing that she had Bell’s paralysis when she was pregnant with her fifth child, Magnolia Belle.
The former “Bachelorette” star (34) shared a photo of her laying down and wearing a mask over her one eye in September 2020, one month before she welcomed her little girl.
“Got Bells Palsy and had to wear a cloth,” Maynard wrote in the photo, which she shared in public for the first time on New Year’s Day.
Bell’s paralysis symptoms include muscle weakness, drooling, jerking, paralysis and a drooping eyelid or corner of the mouth, according to the Mayo Clinic. The condition often occurs quickly and is caused when a nerve in the face becomes swollen or inflamed.
Maynard said she previously had Bell’s paralysis in high school. The condition can occur at any age and for most people it is temporary.
“I had it in high school and luckily I’m one of the few people to get it twice,” she wrote on her Instagram story. “It started with a severe headache that gradually got worse and went into my jaw. Thought it was an ear infection but woke up one morning and could not spit out my toothpaste or put on mascara. I knew exactly what it was such a doctor prescribed me a steroid. ‘
Maynard said he was not 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 blink or whistle.”
“I thought I was 34 years old, I was free from the vanity I had cherished so much in my twenties, but there’s something humble about the fact that I’m 9 months pregnant and half your face can’t move ! ” she said. “I cried a lot and felt horrible, but fortunately it got better day by day.”
Maynard and her husband, Tyler Johnson, have been married since 2014. In addition to the newborn Magnolia Belle, they are parents to sons Jennings (5), Gibson (4) and Gatlin (2). Maynard also has a 15-year-old daughter, Josephine, with late racer Ricky Hendrick, who died in a 2004 plane crash.
Despite her prominent social media presence, the Bachelor Nation favorite chose to keep her pregnancy a secret and only announced it days before her daughter was born last October. Maynard also addressed her reasoning Friday.
“Many questions why I chose not to tell people about my pregnancy: honestly no real answer or plan,” she wrote. ‘A lot of things that were happening in the world back then and social media / news gave me anxiety, so I never had it on Instagram. After a while we decided that it would be nice to just surprise everyone with a new baby! ‘