Food cravings...

The thing that pregnancy does to you is sometimes, weird. I had no idea I would be affected especially by food cravings and this greatly differs from the regular craving I sometime had when I’m not pregnant and there were time the craving is a million times stronger.

There was once I woke up in the middle of the night with a burning desire for dabai. The last fruit I had had was three days earlier. Zoul thought the stock of fruits we brought from Seri Begawan could last a week before another friend coming back to Ganu, after completing an offshore job in Miri would bring me back more dabai. Dabai is a seasonal fruit that could be found in Borneo and we were back in Ganu for a long balik kampong holidays then.

I have no shame in crying and waking Zoul up in the middle of the night to go buy and prepare me dabai but where could he get the dabai since we were still in West Malaysian soil? Hey, what baby wants, baby gets, right? So I cried the whole night…..

Many of these cravings seem to come out of nowhere, and they can feel overpowering. What causes them? Hormones, right?  The extreme hormonal changes women go through during pregnancy can have a huge impact on taste and smell.

"There's no scientific explanation for food cravings. There's no data saying that what a woman craves is related to something her body or her baby needs, and there's no data to support that typical pregnancy food cravings are harmful, either," explains Judith Brown, author of What to Eat Before, During, and After Pregnancy.

Despite my constant bouts of vomiting my appetite hasn’t really been hampered much actually and I still eat as normally as I possibly can, in fact, I’ve been eating a little bit more especially a good dose of breakfast of rote canai or capati daily instead of crackers.  Not forgetting nasi lemak as well and I’ve been munching almonds and fruits in between meals. 

In addition, people telling me how wonderfully healthy I look right now, I thought, WOW, I’m all good.

As a result, I gained a whopping 3 kg.

For someone who hadn’t gained weight in the longest time, that was a shock for me. I could gain weight, apparently.

BUT…

I’m only supposed to gain 0.5 kg per month, and I don’t know if that's been possible for anyone to gain 3kg in within a month!  I was so determined not to gain that much anymore so I ditched rote canai and nasi lemak for boring plain bread.

Yesterday, for another check-up unrelated to antenatal, I lost 0.8kg.

It made me really happy