no sushi for you!...uh, i mean me!
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2006-01-26: no sushi for you!...uh, i mean me!

When it comes to food, it turns out I am a total “craver”. Lately this facet of my personality has come to fruition in all of it’s passionate splendor. From salt to sweets to red meat to fish to orange juice to milk I have been caught craving just about everything eatable under the sun. Pregnancy will do that to a girl though. There – the beans are spilled. I held off on saying anything to anyone for a very long time (well, except for S.) because of my own health history, but now, at 16 weeks I think I can safely stick my toe in the water and talk about it.

My food cravings have been a major facet of my condition lately – cravings for calcium and iron and vitamin C are completely understandable. A strong desire for salty foods and cold food are also totally normal with all that my body has been going through over the past few months. Even my daily craving for french fries is excuseable because my potassium is low...I can justify anything when it comes to food.

The cravings I am having difficulty with are the cravings I am having for foods I am not supposed to eat. Sushi is the big one – I have been missing it terribly the last few weeks. While I am certain that women in Japan eat sushi throughout their pregnancies with no issues resulting from those delectable wee beasties I have chosen to abstain. And California rolls or cooked “sushi” just doesn’t seem to hit the spot in the way I would like. I have told S. his very first duty as a new daddy after the baby is delivered, is to get the new mommy some raw fish. Hopefully the little one won’t arrive at 3am (does anyone know of an all-night Japanese resto in Toronto?).

Coming in second these days is rare beef. I am one of those people who likes her steak red in the middle, so it melts in my mouth when I eat it. This is something I am craving so much that I had a dream last night I was eating a rare steak - and man did it ever taste good! I do worry about bacteria, what with my immune system enjoying taking it’s own turn in doing whatever it damned well pleases and so toxoplasmosis or salmonella are not things that I want uttered in my immediate presence. Coming in third are a bunch of other minor treats that I am missing every once in a while. Things such as goat’s cheese and brie, because it turns out that soft cheeses can contain bacteria (Listeria), which has the ability to cross the placent and cause infection. Raw eggs, which means no home made mayonnaise, eggnog, meringue or under cooked, gorgeous, deliciously oozy eggs for me these days. Deli meats, pâté, many types of fish and of course wine and coffee are all out of the question for me these days. It really is terrible for someone who loves food as much as I do to have these sorts of restrictions imposed upon them :)

My one consolation is peanut butter. When a friend was pregnant last year she was told by her doctor to not eat nuts or nut products because the potential of the child developing a nut allergy would increase. I spoke with my own doctor about this after spending a few tortured weeks not eating one of my favourite quasi-healthy treats (peanut butter on saltines) and he told me that the research actually shows that the child will only develop a nut allergy earlier on if they were in fact going to develop one in the first place. My peanut butter binges would not actually bring about a nut allergy in the child.

So suffice it to say I’m a food maniac these days – snacking around the clock, enjoying different things for different reasons and finding substitutes for things I am missing (I had the best “fake” champagne on New Year’s – I actually felt guilty drinking it, it tasted so real!) and looking forward to a time when I can eat the foods I am forsaking for the moment.