Weight gain

I recognize that there are few things worse than someone without a weight problem complaining about her weight. And yet, as my son says gleefully when he's about to undertake a forbidden action, I'm going to do it anyway!

At my appointment with the midwife this morning, I weighed 153 pounds.

Actually, earlier on in this pregnancy I was afraid that I wasn't gaining enough weight. Ha! I'm not exactly sure how much I weighed when I got pregnant, but I'm guessing it was about 120 pounds. Back when I was 16 weeks pregnant, I estimated that I had gained 12 pounds. At 25 weeks, I had gained a bit over 20 pounds. And now at nearly 29 weeks, I've gained 30 pounds.

Apparently women who are of average weight when they get pregnant are supposed to gain 25 to 35 pounds in total -- around five of those pounds in the first trimester, and around one pound per week for the remaining 25 weeks. So how did I manage to gain nearly ten pounds in just four weeks?

Right now the baby only weighs two and a half pounds (this is just an average estimate, not an actual calculation), so she's got another six pounds before she reaches her brother's birth weight. And I've got another 15 pounds before I catch up with the amount of weight I gained when I was pregnant with her brother.

Think I can keep my weight gain down to a pound per week for the next 11 weeks? Not a chance. I'm not worried about it, however. At least I don't seem to get stretch marks -- haven't yet, anyway!

- - - - -

The baby continues to "measure big," which she has done consistently. That just means that the top of my uterus is higher than they would expect, by about two inches -- each inch supposedly represents a week's worth of fetal growth. (The same thing happened with Isaac, who was taller than average when he was born.) Are newborn girls usually lighter than boys? Or do second children, regardless of sex, tend to be heavier? I'm just wondering what I can expect as far as birth weight goes.

- - - - -

Bizarrely, the BMI calculator still claims I am "normal weight." I am still wearing size six maternity pants, although I've moved up to the DD cup bra. Actually, that might explain the weight gain.