Week 28: The cankles cometh, and suddenly huge

I haven't gained very much weight this month--only 2 pounds, compared to last month's 12. I attribute this mostly to my appetite leveling off after a very hearty second trimester of making up for a highly nauseated first trimester. My midwife says that on the whole my weight gain is right on track.

But more interesting is that despite the lack of weight gain, I have a startling amount of girth gain. At the beginning of the month I was still being told, regularly, that I didn't really look all that pregnant. During the past two weeks my rib cage has expanded a rather astonishing 3 inches, leaving me dashing for the bra extenders and yielding the predictable third-trimester side effect of heartburn after the mildest meals. Tums is my friend. I've been insisting for weeks that the baby is big for date, and for the first time, this morning my midwife measured my fundal height and agreed that my uterus was about 2 cm taller than it should be right around now. That's fine with me; my first was 9 1/2 pounds at birth and I'm quite sure son #2 will make an equally impressive appearance.

It's been a rough week, on the whole. Dean totaled his car this weekend and we've been frantically chasing down bureaucratic nonsense involving his traffic citation, his insurance, and being a one-car family all of a sudden. We're thankful he's ok, of course.

The restless leg syndrome is a lot worse, and I think Bunky has it too. The constant kicking and movement is curious; I could swear Elder Son was never this active, but it has been about 17 years, so, who knows what it was like. I was saying to Dean the other day that I'm a lot more present in this pregnancy than I was in my first. Paying attention to new symptoms as they come along, and noting them in a journal like this? Never thought to do that with my first, and then I was excessively preoccupied with my own misery in an unhappy marriage, whereas now I'm fascinated with the process of gestating life. But today's new symptom is nothing weird. In fact, it's a favorite topic in my childbirth ed class--most of the women are ahead of me, and so have already been having fun with cankles: the phenomenon of ankle swelling such that they disappear into one's calves. The funny thing about this is that the women in my immediate family--my aunts--suffer with this all the time, and not because of swelling. My grandfather had no ankles, to speak of, and my aunts got his legs, and all despised him for it. In fact, my mother spoke enviously of my ankles as I grew into womanhood, and it made me wonder what the hell all the fuss was about. But right now? I'm totally missing my ankles.

Dean said they look uncomfortable. They're not, really--they just feel... puffy. They want a massage, really. That's all.