I guess I should clarify and say that these posts are more things I didn’t know about pregnancy, not things that no one before me has ever known about it. And I’m sure all of them can actually be found in the multitude of books out there somewhere and you may even know about or have experienced them all yourself, but these are mainly the things that struck me as weird or unusual or just something I never expected to happen. So take them all for what they’re worth, if you will.
But moving right along, this one can be called “Smell-A-Vision”.
I had heard that some women get a ridiculously keen sense of smell when they get pregnant, but that’s not exactly what happened to me. It’s more like my smells got all fucked up. There really just is no better way to put it – my favorite scents all of a sudden made my stomach turn, just like that.
In about week my sixth week of pregnancy I came down with a cold that I then couldn’t shake for approximately the next 6-8 weeks. It was awful. I don’t consider it morning sickness because it wasn’t any of those typical symptoms, it was just a stupid winter cold that then morphed into a hacking, sleep-robbing cough. It was miserable. And of course, being newly pregnant, I couldn’t take any medicine that actually worked to get rid of it. The non-drowsy, pregnancy-friendly version of cough medicine? Worthless.
But it was during this time that my nose went haywire. Every single fragrance in the house became my enemy. My favorite perfumes and candles triggered my gag reflex. I’m not kidding, I had to get rid of each and every bottle of lotion, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, etc., and start completely over with the most unscented ones I could find. This made me especially mad because I had just stocked up on all environmentally-friendly products, and I had to junk them all or give them away. And that shit is expensive! Then even the unscented scent started to make me ill. Even if I smelled someone else using one of those products I would get quasi-nauseous.
And just the thought of the smell of certain foods was enough to make me want to puke, too. Right before I got sick (and before anyone besides me and R knew I was pregnant) we had been down at a holiday cocktail party at my mom’s house, and she sent home bags and bags full of leftover food – mini-egg rolls, meatballs, stuffed mushroom caps, the like, and to this day I still have a hard time eating some of those things because of the memory of that illness and how smelling them made me feel then. Super weird, I know.
There was one episode in particular that about made me die – about the same time as that cocktail party, R had gotten a bag full of various types of meat from a butcher that was going out of business in our area and he stuck the whole thing in the refrigerator. So then each time you opened the fridge this vicious combination of meat and leftover party food wafted out, and I swear to you I could be all the way in our living room and almost pass out from that noxious odor. Of course he thought I was crazy – who doesn’t like the smell of all different types of cured meat marinating together in a bag? Barf!
I have now finally gotten pretty much back to normal smell-wise, but it seriously has taken me almost this long. I just recently started wearing perfume again, finding one I used to wear that I can tolerate and actually like. And there are still some of those body products that I can’t use – there’s one type of lotion in particular that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use again, since the smell of it still makes me batty. Even smelling particular scents in my mom’s house that are the same as when we were down there that holiday season takes me back to that time and are not friendly to my head.
Oh man, I need to go take a deep breath of fresh air after reliving my smell-a-vision horrors.