The Ghost of Morning Sickness Past

Does anybody else still have a leftover food aversion from pregnancy? Something that made you sick or you just didn’t want or couldn’t eat? Something you STILL don’t want to eat, however many months or years later? Will I ever eat hummus again? (Because I threw up angel food cake once when I was seven and I STILL can’t bring myself to try it again, so it could be that my digestive system just likes to hold a mean grudge.)

Hummus. I cannot eat hummus. I don’t even want to smell it or look at it or think about it.

Hummus. Oh my God. Even typing the word is making me all queasy.

I gave birth over 18 months ago. That’s about how long it’s been since I struggled with heartburn, and my morning sickness eased up around 21 months ago, more or less. But oh my God. HUMMUS. I still can’t even talk about it.

The thing is, I don’t remember getting particularly extra sick from hummus during my pregnancy. I’m not sure I even ate it at all, because I remember a very strong aversion to it from very early on. I used to like hummus. I probably would have even said I loved it, but I just really didn’t want it once I was pregnant. I would gag just thinking about that pungent, garlicky smell and mushy texture and ew. No thanks, I’ll pass.

But I had PLENTY of other food and odor aversions — meat, in particular, was the big one, along with the smell of cooking eggs or burning toast. I had a very, very limited number of inoffensive foods for the majority of the pregnancy. I remember suddenly wanting a steak in my ninth month and almost weeping for joy over actually enjoying a normal meal without fighting my gag reflex, and as soon as Ezra was born my body immediately started demanding TONS of the previously nausea-inducing foods. MEAT! I WANT MEAT! CHICKEN! FISH! EGGS! IN FACT, SOMEBODY JUST BRING ME A WHOLE COW WITH A SIDE OF PIG ALREADY.

But not hummus. That aversion stays with me still. I have no problems with garlic, but yet I think about hummus and recoil at the imagined smell and phantom heartburn and memories of so. Many. Many. Mornings (and afternoons and evenings) hunched over the toilet, barfing up air and nothingness, praying for it to stop already. My kids love hummus, and I spread it on mini-pita bread for them while not breathing in. My mother-in-law makes her own and always brings along a generous tub when she visits. I finally asked her to please please please stop offering it to me because it really genuinely makes me ill to even contemplate. She, of course, thought I was totally crazy, and probably rude.

If you landed here but are still pregnant, visit Amalah’s Pregnancy Weekly. You won’t regret it.