My feet seem have to have swelled an awful lot and look really misshapen. But - whoa! - my ankles take the biscuit. They are starting to resemble a pair of thunder thighs and I feel most ungainly. My midwife says I've got oedema - puffiness in my ankles and my hands (I can no longer wear my rings due to 'sausage finger' syndrome). Apparently, this can be a warning sign for pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure), which can be dangerous if left untreated. My main concern at the moment is that I cannot get into my shoes and it's too cold for any sort of flipflop-style shoe.
I feel I have definitely entered that infamous 'nesting' period. All I want to do is clean manically and tidy up. My partner finds me cleaning out the kitchen cupboards at two in the morning and clucks me into bed. The next day he finds me dipping into a paint pot at midnight, eager to retouch some areas of the bedroom before the big day. I feel incredibly restless at the moment and yet I also want to make time stand still. Events are just taking over and I don't have the energy to do as much as I want to. I think I will have to stop work by week 37, the journey is wearing me out. My metabolic rate has risen by around 20 per cent so I feel permanently flushed and clammy and sweaty. At least I look pregnant now so a few people do offer me a seat on the tube.
My midwife says that after 35 weeks the baby is putting on around 1oz per day. That means the longer she stays inside, the harder it's going to be to push her out. Also, if I am over two weeks past my due date, then I will be induced, which doesn't sound very pleasant. I hope I will not have a particularly big baby, though by now she is filling virtually all the space in my womb. My placenta is about to stop growing round about now and will then start ageing. Remarkably, it will weigh around one sixth of the baby's birth weight.
I am finding it increasingly difficult to get a good night's sleep. I cannot find a comfortable position unless I share my bed with 2,000 cushions. Lying down also seems to make my heartburn worse. I feel I will be exhausted before the big day arrives.
My partner and I have been ploughing through the Baby Names book. It's double the work at the moment, seeing as we don't know the sex of our child. Boys' names seem a lot trickier than girls' too - there seem to be fewer nice ones. We spend too much time snorting with laughter at the thought of Enid or Englebert, trying to outdo each other with the discovery of a yet more preposterous name. We haven't even got to shortlist stage. Are we still in denial?
