Early Pregnancy: Food Aversions

Written 2/24/16

This morning my body finally decided to start acting pregnant. I shouldn't say finally. I'm still only 6 weeks pregnant. I've known for less than two weeks. This is all very early. But up until this morning, I was exhibiting exactly zero of the early pregnancy symptoms the books and the internet and other women and my doctor said I should already be experiencing. No morning sickness or nausea. No breast tenderness. No fatigue. I was starting to wonder if I was really pregnant.

And it's not like I wanted to be nauseous or tired or in pain. But I was starting to wonder if I was actually pregnant. Sure, my period was12 days late. Sure, I'd taken two pregnancy tests and both had come up positive. Albeit faintly; I'm supposed to take a third later this week to really confirm things. But here I was changing my diet and doing all sorts of research and nothing really seemed to be changing.

That all changed this morning.

Well I suppose it actually changed last night. On my way home from work, I was suddenly hit by an overwhelming feeling of hunger. I had to scrap my plans to make dinner, because I couldn't wait the half hour it would have taken to cook. Thank god for leftovers.

I was, I'll admit, testy. Hunger is not something I deal with well. But after a few bites of reheated lasagna, I was back to normal. Minus some cramping, which could honestly be from the cheese in the lasagna. My lactaid pills are not always foolproof.

This morning I still had the cramps and my whole lower back ached. While I was laying in bed waiting for my alarm to go off I did some googling. It turns out that minor cramping is normal, it's when you start bleeding that you have to go to the doctor. And the lower back pain, something I've dealt with most of my life and which has finally gone away since we bought the Sleep Number mattress, is going to be with me for the entire pregnancy. I should really get back into yoga; I bet it would help.

But the real surprise came over breakfast. I scrambled some eggs with onion, cottage cheese (for extra protein, and because we had some leftover from making the lasagna) and spinach (my doctor said more leafy greens). I took about two bites, and then I just couldn't eat anymore. I could barely look at it. Nausea isn't really the right word. The eggs didn't make me feel sick. I just could not bring myself to take another bite of them.

This isn't really something I expected. I'd heard about food cravings and aversions, sure. But cravings are the side of that that gets played up. My biggest concern was that I would suddenly develop a taste for pickles, because there's no way I'd live something like that down. I didn't expect to be unable to eat one of my breakfast staples.

After Kevin finished my eggs, I spent the rest of the day feeling nauseous off and on. It turns out eggs is one of the more common food aversions, after the things you aren't supposed to be consuming (coffee, alcohol). I don't know why this is, and I don't think anyone else does either. All I know is that it's disorienting to suddenly feel this way about a food I've eaten regularly for years. It has me anxious about what else I'll suddenly start hating. On the bright side, it should go away once the pregnancy is over. A year from now I'll be back to cheesy scrambled eggs. In the meantime, I need to try not to think too much about them.