Tacos and the Anti-Craving

Womb Service link-up hosted by Cedars and Tiny Flowers.

I'm supposed to be doing the Monday cleaning but am putting it off as I think I am coming down with a cold.  So in-between fighting with the Squirt to keep the refrigerate door closed, leisurely reading, and popping ColdEze, Vitamin C, and chewable Airbourne like bits of candy, I'm having lots of fun wasting time online.  I can always clean later . . . right?

Suffice to say that for the first half of my pregnancy, I threw up more than I ate, which explains why I actually lost weight.  But in the early days, I could hold down deli meats and cheeses as long as I ate them after four o'clock in the afternoon.  Then I read that eating deli meats could be dangerous to the umborn, so the salami feasts ceased for the next six months.

Now the most striking craving I had was not a craving at all, but an anti-craving.  I actually didn't care for sweets.  They didn't make me nauseous, and I wasn't averse to eating them, but my history with any food flavored with cups of white sugar is pretty thorgough and would take up two volumes.  I once ate so much fudge in one sitting in the company of a friend that I made her sick to her stomach (right, Ashley?).  It happened that during the eating-period of my pregnancy, my sister-in-law was about making all kinds of luscious desserts--especially cheesecake.  She was experimenting with cheesecake recipes, and I.  Love.  Cheesecake.  I wandered in and about the kitchen admiring her handywork, not feeling the usual intense grasp to devour the deliciousness in a usual fit of gluttony.  I had one piece.  It was good, delicious even!  I just didn't want a second one.  Some days, I passed entirely.  I barely recognized myself!

A few days after the Squirt was born, I wanted a Chick-fil-A shake like WHOA: hold-the-phone, pull-over, swerve-off-the-road, I as a Chick-fil-A and I'm starving breastfeeding mom style.  This combined with earlier NFP charting strongly suggests that I have low progesterone.  But it doesn't come up in the doctors' lab tests, so, you know, I'm just inexplicably experiencing the symptoms of a hormone imbalance but the tests don't confirm it so the symptoms are pretend . . . I guess?

Long story short, my pre-natal doctor put me on progesterone pills which instantly cured my post-pardum depression but which made me gain all the weight back that I had lost from breastfeeding, up-throwing, and then some.  Plus gave me biweekly body aches like I was coming down with the flu.

Anyway, it was a weird ten months.  I did enjoy lots of saltiness, however, which was devastating to my preeclampsia, and my ankles and face swelled like taut sausages in the last four weeks.  Thank God, the Squirt was always perfectly fine.  I don't know what I would have done without my barbecue pork (kidding!).

Other than that, I had a severe fondness for Taco Bell.  I'd never been a Taco Bell enthusiast before (it was meh, every now and then I'd want something really cheesy with sour cream), but I enjoyed a lot of Taco Bell womb service with the Squirt.  A taste for which I have never quite got over.