Fun with Hormones and Bellies

After a nice vacation from my hormones, where I had nice skin, relatively low amounts of heartburn, was tolerating nearly every type of food, and was feeling pretty chipper.
Then about three weeks ago, all hormone hell broke loose. Heartburn is threatening to burn all the way up to the bottom of my eyeballs; my skin is getting temperamental; most beef is off the menu (again), and in fact, I feel like I’m having some sort of cardiac event after nearly every meal. And? I’ve turned into a Psycho Mama with an itchy trigger-finger. Or itchy cry-trigger. My kids would rather ride in their daddy’s truck, and it makes me burst into tears. My husband makes a remark comparing my current style of laughter with that of an imaginary fat guy in a red outfit that smells like reindeer farts, and I want to choke him with his iPhone cord. I even went to an expert like a mental health therapist since I was feeling depressed. A certain, unnamed extended family member sends me an email full of blantant, bold-faced lies (or maybe this person is just ridiculously deluded), and I feel like putting polls here and on Facebook to find out how many other folks remember things exactly like I do. Because it would be hilarious to see all the people respond. But I digress.
So you get that I’m feeling a bit off-kilter as of late, and besides having a racing pulse pounding in me ears after every snack or meal (which makes me dizzy, too, just for kicks), I’m feeling pretty healthy. I’m eating better (healthier) than I have with any of my previous pregnancies, no swelling (yet) or water retention, I actually passed my 1-hour glucose screening (that in itself is a miracle), and due to my visits to the chiropractor, my sciatica and other back-pain has been kept in-check. My only real concern at this point is my weight gain. With both Gavin and Cooper, I had gained a total of 37 pounds each. This time, I’ve already gained 30 and still have about ten weeks left to go. In fact, the weight came on so fast that I didn’t believe my bathroom scale. So much so that I thought it was going bad and bought a new scale….which gave me the same feedback, except in much larger and digital numbers. So then I blamed it on the fact that I hadn’t pooped in two-and-a-half days. After a few hours, a large bowl of frosted shredded wheat, and a trip to the bathroom, I only lost about two pounds.

About three weeks ago (26 weeks and 6 days)

Now, my belly is sticking out the bottom of my shirts and I’m pulling out maternity clothes that I typically don’t wear until the last month or so. Except that I’ve got more than two months to go.

Earlier today (29 weeks 5 days)

Note the maternity shirt struggling to cover maternity belly, the under-belly pants with their strangle hold on my abdomen, all necessitating the maternity support tank-top to prevent random, unplanned flashes of maternity butt and belly. And making this sweaty pregnant woman hotter. I’m thinking that maybe a mu-mu might be ideal at this point.