Strange Pregnancy Cravings?

I am 5 months pregnant with my second child. When I was pregnant with my daughter I HAD to eat fried eggs and diet root beer (Mug or A&W) EVERYDAY! With this baby I crave roast beef, preferably cold with that nice spicy crusty edge! I have been eyeing the rump roasts at Jewel. I also crave cherry/cola Slurpees. I could drink one every night. Any other strange tales of cravings?

For MrsF it was always donuts.
When not pregnant it's only usually donuts, but when she was pregnant, it was always donuts.

I don't know about cravings, though I often tell my daughter she is made of 90% matzoh ball soup and 10% strawberry ice cream. The thing I remember most is my wildly enhanced sense of smell and the attendant disgust for 3 categories of food: 1) anything with garlic, 2) cured meats, and 3) seafood. I didn't recover my taste for lobster and shrimp for nearly 2 years. Recently, I told an incredulous GWiv and stevez the following anecdotes from pregnancy:

I was about 7 months pregnant, attempting to take a nap upstairs one day in late summer, when I was roused from my reverie by the smell of cigarette smoke. I was puzzled, since I was alone in the house. When it persisted, I investigated, only to find that the offending smoke came from my neighbor, who was taking a cigarette break from mowing his lawn-- across the street!

Later that summer, we were having our kitchen-family room gutted and renovated. There was not a lick of food in the place, but I began to smell garlic every time I entered the room. Since I was bothered on a daily basis by strong smells in the environment, I began to think that this smell was just an illusion that reflected my over-sensitive pregnant state. But one day I decided to find out whether I was in fact imagining this. I focused on the corner of the kitchen that seemed the source of the garlic smell and dismantled the cabinet in that corner. On the floor, in back of a series of drawers, was an errant bulb of garlic, growing a green shoot about 4 inches long! What a relief.

But it's that ability to walk up the walls and across the ceiling that really gets them at parties, Josephine.

It's 9:37 pm and Hubby is on a Slurpee run!

Margaritas!! Of course I couldn't really do much about that--probably just the forbidden fruit effect. Otherwise it was ice cream a lot of the time--the Potbelly's across from my office made me a heck of a lot of malts that summer.

Josephine's story reminded me of a trip to New Orleans planned before I was pregnant and taken when I was about 2 months along. I'll never forget the smell of a stroll down Bourbon Street on a warm night: garbage, cigars, vomit, etc. all magnified about 100x normal. I'd never go there pregnant again--I really didn't enjoy the food as I have on other trips.

I have posted about my need for cheese fries during pregnancy number one. Muskie's won that prize.

This time around (I am 4.5 months along right now) it's been good green olives (with or without jalapeno stuffing), hot giardinera, tom yum, and Ghirardelli brownies. And, to my husband's chagrine, baked potato soup. From Bennigan's.

Really, I'm compelled to need something, get it and move on to the next thing. At least we're mixing it up. Though I think my husband misses the cheese fries.

I'm nine weeks pregnant with my first baby and I haven't had any cravings yet -- just a lot of aversions. I love coffee and beer, so I wasn't looking forward to given up either of them, but now I find that I cannot bear to go near them. When my husband got me a non-alcoholic beer when we were out a few weeks ago, I took two sips and was like . . . NO! Also, I've tried a lot of ginger products to combat nausea (ginger tea, ginger ale, etc) but now they are starting to make me ill because I associate them with feeling queasy.

Though normally I have several cups a day, I also utterly lost my taste for coffee during both my pregnancies, but that was the only way in which my appetite was affected. Otherwise I really enjoyed having a positive incentive to drink lots of milk (which I like), milkshakes (when we first started going to Prairie Joe's in Evanston) and red meat.

For those of you pregnant ladies who can't bear to give up coffee, apparently you don't necessarily have to - moderate amounts of coffee (3 cups per day) seem to have no impact on the baby or the pregnancy:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/01/26/pr ... eine.reut/

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID ... 7C48DF40FF

For me, with my second, it was Rojo's medium salsa and chips. I don't know why it had to be Rojo's brand, but I would cry if the store ran out. At one point I was going through a container a day. I also found it necessary to stop at Heaven on Seven after each doctor's appointment for a gumbo to go with a jalapeno corn muffin. My daughter adores spicy food -- who knows if this is why??

Suzy

I just went to tgi friday's and had a very yummy drink. They have non-alcoholic fruit slushees. Mine was strawberry lemonade and it totally satisfied my slurpee craving for tonight!

Hotdogs! I had to stop at every hot dog stand we passed. You're not even supposed to eat hotdogs I don't think, but I couldn't help myself. I would have midnight runs to the Wiener Circle, mmmmmmm!

Great topic! Until you are the pregnant one, I don't think you can quite understand the weight that the word "craving" carries.
Throughout most of my life, given a choice about what protein I would eat, fish of some variety would be my option...UNTIL I got pregnant with my first son. Suddenly red meat ruled my life. It's now 19 years later, and I can still vividly recall how wonderful the filet that I ordered for my birthday dinner at that time tasted. Cheeseburgers became another obsession. I don't think anything really changed with my second son four years later. I had returned to eating lots of fish and chicken, then suddenly I was mainlining cheeseburgers again. Chicken was actually one of the things that I developed a strong aversion to.

I have to say, I never sent the husband out on any of the late night runs that are so famous. I'm sure he was grateful for that.

I had never eaten a chili dog in my life until I was 28 and pregnant with my first child. Suddenly, I was eating them almost every day for lunch -- with extra onions and a root beer. Sometimes I'd have two.

It's true: Unless you've experienced it, you just can't understand it. Up to that point in the pregnancy, I hadn't let white flour or sugar or any sort of processed anything touch my lips. But for a period of about two weeks there in 1981, I had to have two chili dogs for lunch every day. With the second pregnancy, it was one scoop of Baskin-Robbins chocolate almond and one scoop of chocolate mint in the same cup. Had to be in the same cup and had to be Baskin-Robbins.

During both pregnancies, I couldn't eat corn. Somehow the sweet, buttery sublime flavor of corn tasted just really foul to me.

Three cheers for all the pregos and moms of LTH!!!!!

With my daughter, who is just over 2, I had to have spicy food a lot (Thai, and especially Ethopian) as well as Reeses pieces, Reeses Peanut butter cups, peanut butter or almond butter. She does love almonds, peanuts, walnuts, filberts etc.
Currently at 32 weeks, I coud eat dim sum every day. I also craved Fritos.
I developed a chicken aversion when pregnant with my daughter, that never went away, even between pregnancies, it makes me gag, with the exception of Buffalo Wings..
LO

I forgot to add Cheetos (not the puffy kind). I don't buy them because I'd eat them all!!

For those still in the womb, variety in the mother's diet can ensure that a fetus is exposed to a full range of flavors. This may promote acceptance of these flavors later in life. So, expectant mothers, eat curry if you want your child to eat curry. Eat garlic if you want your child to eat garlic. But, as many veteran parents know, if you want your child to eat Brussels sprouts, good luck!

Early, Early Learning... - Parenthood.com

and

The current findings complement Mennella and co-author Beauchamp's long-term research program on how breastfeeding infants learn about flavors. Because breast milk transmits flavors of mothers' diets to nursing babies, breast-fed babies are exposed to flavor experiences during the nursing period. The Monell researchers suggest that this natural early flavor exposure serves to establish flavors of the mother's diet which will subsequently be fed to the growing child as acceptable and preferred.

ScienceDaily: First Flavors Form A Lasting Impression

No cravings for babies one and two, but I went a little crazy with baby 3 (who turned 15 this week). I've never had such an intense craving before or since. Pretzels ruled my life (and I don't really even like them). I lived in Florida at the time and I had to walk with my back to the pretzel display at Publix. I gave up pretzels during my ninth month. I moved to carrots and ate so many my palms took on an orange glow. Oh, I also sniffed Cheer laundy soap. (I didn't inhale!). I even brought a Baggie filled with Cheer powder to Lee Memorial Hospital when I went into labor. Staff probably thought it was something else. I just found the clean smell comforting.

janeyb wrote:No cravings for babies one and two, but I went a little crazy with baby 3 (who turned 15 this week). I've never had such an intense craving before or since. Pretzels ruled my life (and I don't really even like them). I lived in Florida at the time and I had to walk with my back to the pretzel display at Publix. I gave up pretzels during my ninth month. I moved to carrots and ate so many my palms took on an orange glow. Oh, I also sniffed Cheer laundy soap. (I didn't inhale!). I even brought a Baggie filled with Cheer powder to Lee Memorial Hospital when I went into labor. Staff probably thought it was something else. I just found the clean smell comforting.

':lol:'
janeyb, I totally believe you. The whole smell thing during pregnancy is mind-bending! It gave me some basis for understanding the neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks' story in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat about the med student who, after taking amphetamines, developed the acute sense of smell of a dog!

DS #1: chili dogs
DS #2: sauerkraut & porkchops
DS #3 (he's just 12 days old!): Twix bars & Thai food

Congrats!!

My new obsession is chocolate chip cookies. They must be homemade. With butter. And be served with a monstrous glass of milk.

That, and super vinegary buffalo wings.

French cremes from Wieboldts (Lincoln and Belmont) candy counter. And hot fudge sundaes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The thought of any other food made me queasy. Except for rib tips, oooooh I craved rib tips.

My Mother loves to advise how she ate spit fire hot goulashes and curries while pregnant with me. While I enjoy food, I do not enjoy 'heat' in my food. Somehow crying and coughing up a long is not enjoyment. Could the source of my adversion be my prenatal experiences?

Regards,

Onions made me gag. I stopped wanting meat, and started craving fish alot(which i wasn't supposed to eat much of due to mercury content). Even 2% milk started to taste incredibly rich to me and i drank a lot of it, as a shake or with chocolate syrup. It quit tasting good after my pregnancy. Overall, I couldn't eat as much as before I was pregnant, I think because my daughter was squishing my stomach, making it feel fuller(guessing). My smell sense was super strong, too.

For the first three months, I (when I could tolerate food other than Wheat Thins and peanut butter sandwiches) craved junk food intensely. It was an odd feeling, because typically I don't like most processed foods at all - but there I was at the store, buying Donette Gems, crappy Hershey's candy, and Spam. That was the most horrifying, but I just had to have it. Very strange to be wolfing down fried Spam, loving it, while thinking, "What am I doing? I HATE Spam!" I also couldn't tolerate fruit or vegetables at all. I made several trips to the store for fruit that went bad, because I thought, well, maybe I'll be able to eat it this week.

Currently I love tofu and Ovaltine, so my diet has taken a turn for the nutritious.

Congratulation on your passenger in production.

My sister had a baby a few months ago. We began referring to him as the passenger, which likely sounds unusual.

I didn't understand what a donette gem was. I guess donette was the clue, but gem threw me off. I somehow was expecting a candy. You are in good company in your desires, because Hostess claims, "Each year, Hostess bakes enough Donettes to wrap around the Earth three times!"

Best wishes,

The aversions are interesting: just after I found out I was pregnant with Sparky, we attended a family party where my friends had especially arranged for a large wheel of blue cheese, knowing my love of stinky cheeses (technically, you're supposed to avoid soft cheeses anyway) I couldn't even get near the thing, and family lore has it that I actually turned green at one point and had to go sit with my head between my knees in another room. Took several years for me to get back the taste for it.

I don't really remember cravings (hubby could probably chime in, but he's working) but I do remember what finally set me off: I was in very annoying pre-labor and had been for days (mild contractions every so often throughout the day and night, nothing consistent) and went to a family birthday dinner of greasy bratwurst and sauerkraut - I believe this is what finally kick-started full labor a few hours later. (This is also a documented if not scientific phenomena, usually spicy foods are implicated but basically any upset of your digestive system - there were definite unpleasant repurcussions, though - I advise against doing this on purpose.)

My aversions were much stronger than my cravings. I could not even touch the cottage cheese container without gagging, and two years later, I still feel sick thinking about it. I also had a strong aversion to sweet potatoes and apples, which I normally eat almost every day.

I craved nectarines (and would eat three or four a day), lemonade (normally hate), and cold cereal. And in the beginning, I also liked junk food. The junkier, the better, and usually flavorless- kraft mac and cheese was a big one, I ate BOXES of that crap.