Vinegar, bananas, peanut butter – the things we crave when we are pregnant vary so much from person to person! As part of a week on TalkMum about pregnancy nutrition, blogger Natalie shares her weird pregnancy cravings with us and explains how her diet changed during her pregnancy.
Before my first pregnancy, I was a gym bunny who lived on sushi, salmon and salad and mango but when the blue line appeared, my morning sickness kicked in and life changed forever – in more ways than one.
Eddie was a surprise pregnancy so the vodka and cigarettes that had been very much part of my PR lifestyle in Soho went out of the window straight away as I wanted to be super healthy and nurture my bump. Little did I realise that Mother Nature had other ideas. Anything resembling ‘healthy’ made me feel really sick and for the next 9 months I craved the junk food I would never have eaten usually.
It started with tinned ravioli which helped stop the nausea – FAST – and I was known to eat it cold and straight from the can – gross I know, but it worked! I also demolished white bread, Yorkies and crisps, as well as Starbucks hot chocolate with cream and caramel slices. I hadn’t eaten meat for years but when we went out to celebrate the news, I ordered a steak and chips and that has been my favourite meal since. I get really bad eczema and a sniff of cheddar causes a flare up in hours, but a thick slice of cheese on toast was one of my favourite new snacks – I didn’t care about the rash as it stopped the sickness.
The weird pregnancy cravings kicked in more with baby number two. I’d eat handfuls of frozen peas (still frozen), sour Haribo sweets and drank – yes, drank – vinegar. At one point I was drinking a bottle of the stuff a day and it tasted even better if it was from a jar of pickled onions, surprisingly it didn’t give me heart burn but it did make the sickness go away for a little while!
My sons are now 2 and 4 and both happy. Whilst the cravings have gone, I still can’t stomach salmon and I do have an emergency can of ravioli in the cupboard, just in case…!
Natalie Trice is a full-time mum who has given up the rat race to focus on the things she loves, which she shares on her blog, Just Because I Love.
