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From choma sausages to milkshake... What triggers cravings in pregnant women?
Most pregnant women get cravings for certain foods.
Pauline Skelly is a first time mum. Like most expectant women, her prenatal stage was full of cravings. It is in that natural urge that was irresistible and inexplicable that her antenatal days were made, literally.
“I had cravings, mostly related to iron deficiency. I was told every pregnancy is different, so I enjoyed mine as unique as it was,” she says.
True to her words, prenatal journeys are not papers, they cannot be photocopied. Everyone experiences it in their own original way. Skelly’s cravings were not as weird as the ones you have read on the internet, like the urge to smell petrichor - rain’s beautiful aroma after a long rainless period, or the desire to chew a dirty duster. She craved food, salty food. You would have been her food Santa had you satiated her craving for nyama choma, pork chops, crunchy deep fried chicken, smoked intestines, boiled eggs…name them, as long as salt is involved.
Cold milkshake
I ask her what it felt like, wanting something so badly that you look for it wherever until you find it. She says: “When you crave something, you feel hungrier than usual. So, when you finally get what you have been looking for, you end up eating all types of cravings around you, with the hope of clearing your mind off the thought of that food type.”
Unlike Skelly, Mercy Ng’etuny’s cravings, like gears, shifted from time to time. Mercy’s cravings were a literal bittersweet food relationship. One time, she would badly want mursik downing its way to her stomach, and the next time, she hoped for a cold milkshake. Different tastes, sour and sweet, respectively.
She says: “My cravings did not last long because I made sure I got the food on the very day, or within the week.”
Skelly and Mercy are just but a small population of many women who have cravings when they are pregnant. Some girls, research has shown, have a similar feeling when they have about eight days to go on their periods (the perimenstrum period).
Hormone changes
You may be wondering why this urge is so strong that you cannot resist it.
A research published in the journal of Frontiers in Psychology, attributes this effect to a number of reasons. It could be a psychosocial and cultural effect, nutritional deficits, hormonal changes or specific ingredients found in the craved food. The researchers note that very few women crave salty or savoury foods. That makes Skelly and Mercy part of that small population that craves for such.
However, they acknowledge that more research is also needed to link known fluctuations in levels of hormones across gestation with reported food cravings.
Like Skelly mentioned, her cravings were iron-deficiency related, which explains why the researchers found out that some people could have that longing for food because of nutritional deficits. Notably, the study points out that: “Because the nutritional needs of the foetus increase as development progresses, the intensity of cravings should follow the same trajectory.”
Mercy, on the other hand, could have the psychosocial or cultural effect, no wonder the urge to drink mursik or milkshake was irresistible. “There are culture-specific differences in reported types, perceived meaning, and psychosocial correlates of cravings in pregnancy," says the research.
Weight gain
As to when exactly this urge to eat certain foods or drinks occurs, the researchers note that: “In terms of temporal patterns, it has been reported that food cravings typically emerge by the end of the first trimester.”
“The most common trajectory of food cravings across gestation shows a peak in frequency and intensity during the second trimester, followed by a subsequent decline as the pregnancy progresses to term.”
The dark side that comes with the enjoyment of the binge eating that comes with pregnancy, could lead to excessive gain of weight. In the same journal, researchers categorically remind expectant mothers that, “excessive gestational weight is emerging as a potentially even greater threat to health and wellbeing of both women and children".
So, moderation is key.
