As I write this I’m eating a packet of salt and vinegar chips and downing an iced coffee. No, it’s not food I’d normally eat but I’m celebrating the end of morning sickness (or what pregnant women know as all-bloody-day-long sickness.)
Many a cliché is built around pregnancy cravings but, I’m one of the 54% of pregnant women who experiences the opposite: food aversion.
This time is started early. I hadn’t had time to miss my period before I woke up feeling hungover and unable to stomach much other than Vegemite on toast. And corn chips.
While I have been lucky enough in both my pregnancies to keep my food down, the sudden aversion to one of my biggest pleasures in life – preparing and sharing meals – came as a major disappointment.
Just walking past a BBQ chook shop would have me dry heaving. Meals were perfunctory, preferably vegetarian and served out of a packet. Luckily, my son’s daycare provides a hot, nutritious, home cooked meal every day, so I didn’t feel so guilty serving up another bowl of pasta for dinner.
This time, horror of horrors, I even went off coffee. That, however is not so unusual. While researchers still don’t know why pregnant women have cravings, they have identified an intensified perception of bitterness during the first trimester. They think this might be an evolutionary protection, because many toxic plants and fruits taste bitter. This taste change helps warn pregnant women against consuming poisons, such as alcohol, during critical phases of foetal development, and interestingly, the aversion to bitter tastes typically lessens by the third trimester, when the crucial phases of foetal development have ended.
Another theory, yet to be proven, states that pregnant women subconsciously crave what they need. For example, you crave milkshakes when you’re iron deficient. Nice theory, but where do sour Coca Cola lollies fit on the food pyramid? And why can I still not stomach leafy greens or red meat?
There’s also the irrational craving. I once knew a woman who insisted her husband drive to the other side of the city to collect take away from a certain Thai restaurant. I have made sudden and immediate demands for MdDonald’s burgers just for the pickles, even though I usually can’t stand the place.
It can’t be my inner-nutritionist speaking, can it?
Personally, I think it must be the hormonal equivalent of a chocolate and red wine craving when pre-menstral. The same hormones make us pregnant women cry at television commercials and cause inexplicable feelings of road rage.
Many a man has taken on a hormonal woman and lost. If she wants ice-cream, buy her ice-cream. Pickles at 2am? No problem. Let’s face it, there are so many restrictions on what pregnant women can eat these days, if you do want something, and it’s on the safe foods list, go for your life.
Next week: what if I don’t love my second child as much as my first?
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