I'm gonna guess unmanaged Gestational Diabetes Mellitus. Those babies can get super big super quick towards the end. I had to have mine at 38 weeks cause of the size difference from 36 weeks was massive and my glucose levels were managed really well.
I'll also throw in a bit of just generally being older amd unfit too.
Diabetics DO retain quite a bit of fluid.
Also, what's fucked about being diabetic is...since with type 2 (and gestational) your pancreas produces plenty of insulin, it's just your
cells that do not
respond to the insulin very well. When that happens, the sugars that normally go into all the cells in your body have nowhere to go, so they just hang out in your bloodstream (hence, blood sugar). So you have all this sugar in your blood, but your cells are not reciving it. The part that's fucked up is: your cells are deprived of their energy, so they send signals that say "Hey! We need nutrition over here! We can't function without energy!" In short, a diabetic can feel hungry all the damn time, that, and the fatigue that comes with high blood sugar, and you are in a vicious fucking cycle. You have to
carefully watch what you eat.
Even fucking potatos can make your sugars spike, because potatos are starchy, are starches break down into sugars in your body.
When the fetus is exposed to more sugar then someone without gestational diabetes...well, what happens when YOU eat sugar, ya gain weight lol
I wish every pre-diabetic, diabetics of both types, and women with gestational diabetes are able to have Dexcom 7s or somthing similar, it would help out tremendously for them to see how their body reacts to certain foods. It puts it better in your brain to see it in real time, plus finger pricks are a bitch.