Hey, guys! Long time no post, eh? Sorry about that. As most of you may or may not know, the past year and a half has been c-r-a-z-y for me and not always in a good way - but mostly in a good way, especially the past nine months almost.
So, what's been going on??
Let's start from the beginning. Early last year, due to some miscommunication between myself and my doctor (but mostly just the doctor - lol), I went through a bout of crazy high blood pressure and weight gain. At first, no one knew what was going on because everything except for one thing had stayed the same - and it just so happened that one thing is what brought it all on.
Once that was figured out (by a new doctor, I might add), I was on the road to getting everything back in order and everything seemed to start going splendidly again. So splendidly in fact, that my husband and I decided it might be time to add an addition to the family after four years of marriage - we wanted to have a baby. Being the overly paranoid type, I decided before we started trying that I wanted to go to the doctor to make sure everything was 100% ready to go - and that's when the second big road block came around. I found out I had cervical cancer. Luckily for me, I caught it super early and it was still superficial, so all I had to do was undergo a small surgery to get rid of it - no radiation and no chemo of any sort. But, that put a HUGE stop on plans to have a baby because not only did I have to recover for months and months, there was also the very high possibility that my cervix might not be strong enough to carry a child full-term. There was a lot of crying and depression on my part, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that things in life happen for a reason and, if I wasn't meant to have a child, then that just meant I'd grow old with just my husband and our animal babies.
After my months of recovery, I just decided to let nature take its course even though my doctor had warned me it could take forever to conceive after my surgery.. or it just may never happen. A little over a month later, I found out I was pregnant.
This coming Monday, I will be 38 weeks pregnant. That pic up there is a 3D picture of my sweet baby boy that will be gracing us with his presence so very soon. My pregnancy hasn't been ideal with morning sickness, allergies, sinus issues, aches, pains, etc. HOWEVER, as far as pregnancy and his development goes, it's been pretty textbook and I couldn't ask for anything more than that. At my appointment today, I found out that he weighs 7 pounds already and they're expecting him to make it to his due date of November 12.
So, what does that mean for the blog??
I would first like to say a huge thank you to all of my followers that have stuck around, even though there hasn't been much going on lately. This blog has suffered more than anything else in my life from my health issues and everything else going on. But I haven't forgotten about it and I most certainly am NOT ready to give up on it. Even though I haven't been around and I have not updated.. my love of books has never waned. I still read a lot and I have a TON of books that I need to review.. I just haven't gotten around to it because it's so uncomfortable for me to be on a computer for more than a few minutes. If it wasn't for my phone, I probably wouldn't have any online communication whatsoever.
I can say one thing, though: I miss blogging and reviewing. And I'm ready to get back on track. However, I am a lot more realistic about my life and my priorities now versus what I would like to get done. It will be a slow process, but it WILL happen. If my baby goes full-term, then that means I have a little over two weeks to prepare for him.. and I still have A LOT to do to prep for him. So, that comes first. And I know that once he's here, my world will be turned upside down for a little while. There's no physical way I can just come back to blogging 100% from the very beginning. So, I'm making a compromise.
In some of my down time, I have revised a small plan that may help me get back on track. First, I know there's no way I can post reviews on a daily basis - even though I probably have a year's worth or more of reviews I could post if I did it daily. (I told you I've still been reading!) I have a list of at least 50% of my books that I have read and need to do reviews for. When I have some time to myself, I will start scheduling those.. and these will probably start showing up around the time I have Riley or maybe later in November. Second, I don't think sporadic reviews will be enough and I'd like to start up a feature again to keep this blog active. A lot of bloggers do IMM, Teaser Tuesdays, Waiting on Wednesday, or some type of weekly top ten list. I love those, but I don't know if I can be consistent with any of those. What I thought I would do that seems more feasible is the Before & After feature that I started a couple years back with debut authors. Before & After is an easy enough deal to keep up with. The most energy spent for the project is finding debut authors (already have a list), contacting them and formatting each blog post for each author that participates. It's simple - and something that I really enjoy because it goes with what I like doing on my blog, which is promoting good books and new authors.
So, that's the plan. Hopefully, this blog will be up and running again very soon and I will be able to join the bookish world once more during my journey of becoming a new mommy. :)
Once again, thank you all for sticking around. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I'll see you all very soon!! <3
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