And, boy, have we been having fun. Well, mostly having fun. The past couple of months have had some great ups, but also a few downs. (I’m sure that’s true for just about everybody reading this!)
Our biggest wonderful thing that happened was the arrival of Baby #5 just over a week before her due date, a little before 6 AM on September 26. (Which also happens to be the date of my husband’s and my eighth anniversary! Now we get to say that we’ve had five children in exactly eight years. {We have six altogether, counting my step-daughter.})
We’re blessed to have this baby with us. She’s a sweet girl and her other siblings love her dearly. I thought for the first week or so we’d have to create a spreadsheet of who got to hold her when, but they’ve settled down a little.
The biggest not-so-wonderful thing involved another hospital stay.
Two weeks after I had the baby, I ended up at the hospital again because over the course of a week half my face had drooped and I was having bad headaches and vision issues. (This was on top of feeling absolutely exhausted.) We were afraid I’d had a postpartum mini-stroke or something, but it turned out to be a partial case of Bell’s palsy. My doctors assured me that in most cases, patients are back to normal within two to six months.
Okay. Deep breath. I could deal with that. (Prayer helped a lot. I’m grateful for all the friends who prayed for me and for our family during that time.)
After a couple of days on medicine, I started feeling human again. (One of those times where you don’t realize how bad you felt until you start feeling better.)
I got used to my face looking weird, and the headaches gradually lessened, but the hardest part of dealing with Bell’s palsy those first couple of weeks was that I couldn’t read.
Man, was that tough. Here I was, with more time to read because I was on the couch with a newborn, and I couldn’t. I tried blowing up the text, but it didn’t help much.
Anyway…as you can imagine, that kinda threw a monkey wrench into my writing goals and plans for this last quarter of 2023. I’d already planned for things to slow down after I had the baby, but this was…something else.
On top of all that, we had the usual organized chaos from the end of October to the Friday before Thanksgiving, when the addiction ministry my husband and I both work for has its largest fundraiser of the year.
So, yeah, life intervened.
Thankfully, my face finally started improving, which also improved my vision. At this point in time, my vision is back to normal and my face is almost completely healed. I still have intermittent headaches most days (thankfully very mild), but they should go away in the next few months.
I’m blessed. It could have been a lot worse.
Writing Updates
Apart from some progress on a couple of projects in the last few weeks, the only major thing I managed to accomplish this quarter was getting everything done for The Spy at the Embassy Special Edition Kickstarter. (Thanks again to those of you who backed it!)
I’d meant to announce that Blowback, Finder Book 5 officially published on October 24th, but that didn’t happen. (I was still dealing with vision issues.)
You can find it here. I’m excited that it’s officially out in the world!
I’d also intended to do a little more buildup to The Spy at the Embassy’s official release next week (both the regular and special editions), but that didn’t happen either. (You can preorder the regular edition here and the special edition here.)
I’ll be back with an official release blog on Tuesday, Lord willing.
That said, I was able to make some plans on paper for a tangential project I’ve been working on since January. (Thank goodness for wide-ruled notebooks! I usually prefer college-ruled, but when you can’t see well, the wider the better. *grin*) I’d wanted to finish it and announce it in March or April, but having another baby pushed the deadline out farther. Just not enough time or energy in the day during that period.
Should have more to announce on that front by the end of next week or the beginning of January. I’m very excited. *grin*
Anyway, have a wonderful Christmas! (Or whatever other holiday you celebrate.)
Until next time!
Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash
