Last Saturday night we went over to my sister's house to see her for the first time in a couple weeks, and the first thing she said to me, very loudly in front of all of her children and six of my visiting aunts and uncles and cousins was, "Ohmigosh, my little sister has boobs!" She has every right to be surprised by the new set of appendages sitting on my chest. My small-chestedness has been a stabilizing constant in my family's lives, not unlike their belief that the Church is true and that God lives. They have always been able to testify with very much faith and confirmation from the Spirit that Heather has no boobs, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

My boobs are perhaps the most glaring side effect of second trimester pregnancy. I marvel at them daily, primarily because I've always wanted boobs, more than I ever wanted Malibu Barbie or front row tickets to a Debbie Gibson concert. If the 11-yr old Heather had known that the pregnant 28-yr old Heather was going to have so much glorious boobage, the 11-yr old Heather never would have worn that poorly designed padded bra for so many months, and the endless torment, which included being pelted with tissue paper every time I got on or off the bus to middle school, never would have happened. It's a sad, sad story, but if I had only known that my profile in late August of 2003 would include bumps other than my nose and chin I could have saved THOUSANDS on psychotherapy.

Now that the nausea has thoroughly subsided I am able to eat properly for two, and once I'm done with two I feed the other 15 appetites that have seemingly taken up residence in my body. There are no words to describe the hunger I experience on a moment to moment basis, and not even white bread can satiate the urge to eat my own fingers. Not that I haven't tried to curb the demons with white bread -- croissants, crumbly buttermilk biscuits, rolls, English muffins, and little dough balls made from strips of Wonder Bread that I roll up in the palm of my hand. Never before I have I been such an irresponsible adult, clogging my arteries hourly with enough carbohydrate voltage to power the western United States. I'm willing to bet that my boobs are just storage receptacles for excess white bread, and let's just say that I'm well stocked for the long winter ahead.

In addition to the boobation and hunger, the major second trimester side effects I'm experiencing are aches and pains and cramps associated with the expansion of my uterus. If that sounds uncomfortable, you should try sleeping on your left side the ENTIRE NIGHT, five nights in a row as your thighs stretch and crack in opposite directions. Most of the books I've read say that if I wake up in the middle of the night and I happen to be on my back, I should just roll over to my left side and not panic; however, sleeping on my back has the potential to suffocate the baby and kill it dead in the uterus, SO BE CAREFUL! I'm honestly afraid that if I happen to stop for more than a millisecond on my back as I turn from one side to the other that the Baby Police are going to come to my house and take me away in the back of a squad car for conspiracy to commit baby endangerment, and I'd be totally guilty. Anyone with white bread boobs has to be guilty of something.