Olivia Sudjic on the inability to eat during pregnancy – and one dish that brought her joy when she became able to eat again. Words and photo by Olivia Sudjic.
Oof, I had HG and a lot of this really resonates with me! I had a very strict routine of eating cereal and the grumpy local newsagent used to go to different cash and carries to find the sweets I was able to eat (he clearly wasn’t as grumpy as he appeared and I never asked him to do this). Such a great feeling when I could eat good food again. Wishing you well with the last few weeks of pregnancy.
Thank you so much for this piece, Olivia. I also experienced HG in both my pregnancies (am currently still in the 2nd one), and was told by the Vittles editors your piece was coming up – it is a pleasure to read it, though unsurprisingly it also almost reduced me to tears. The ice cubes, the nausea replacing your personality, the torture of trying to eat, your own kitchen being a no-go area: it's all too familiar.
I'm so grateful for anything where HG is more talked about and is getting more attention so thank you Vittles and Olivia for this.
Also a reminder to anyone else suffering with it and/or having trouble getting hold of the medication they need, Pregnancy Sickness Support are an amazing charity who are there to help: https://pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk.
Olivia, I hope it's well in the past for you, and congratulations getting through two HG pregnancies!
Such a beautiful piece of writing. Pregnancy is strange, magical, transformative... and horrendous in equal measure... I did not have HG during my pregnancies, but suffered from very extreme food aversions for most of my first. I could not face eating almost all foods at some point - meat in almost any form, all fruit, cooked vegetables... I would cook whole meals and be unable to eat them or even be in the room with them. The sight of food in packaging was overwhelming. I had to leave some supermarkets because the smell of the meat from standing at the front door was too much.
The things I could stomach, reliably, were not even bland food - egg mayonnaise sandwiches, anything heaped (HEAPED) with mustard, processed cheese slices and thai curry (green only). At one point, I was eating these same foods almost daily because everything else was unthinkable. A friend of mine used to stand at the petrol pump inhaling the smell of petrol to calm her nausea.
I loved these words Olivia, thanks for sharing this. As someone working in the world of food who has recently experienced the tiniest fraction of what you have been going through (I am pregnant but not suffering with HG) - you describe the alienating, suffocating feeling of not being able to trust all one’s favourite things so well. I am thrilled you’re feeling better with meds and I wish you the best for the final few weeks and beyond. Rosie x
“Puking was in fact the best part of my day, since at least then I had a brief respite” - this so relatable I feel like I could have written it myself!
It is a bizarre and distressing experience to wake up one day and find yourself repulsed even by the idea of food let alone having to look at it, touch it, smell it or taste it. I suffered from HG and dysgeusia for the whole nine months in my first pregnancy. At one point I remember being scared to leave my house in case I caught a whiff of the neighbours cooking dinner (normally something that would make me stop and linger, to try and decipher what might be on the menu). I survived on tomato soup and bread with the occasional bit of cheese, and I was sad and terrified the whole time, that the joy and pleasure of eating would never come back to me…but it did and it does!
I’m currently two months postpartum from my second baby, and this time around I was insatiable for any and everything, but I couldn’t enjoy it really because every morning I woke up with the fear and anxiety, that today might be the day that HG reared its ugly head again. To my relief it didn’t.
Thanks for articulating this - it is reassurance for any people going through the lonely and traumatic experience of it, and also for those of us who have been through it before - we were never alone…
Wishing you all the best for the rest of your pregnancy!
Being male, I can only empathise. How frightful…. The drugs must work, though, if you could stomach Parmesan!
I will pass on a great tip I stole from Colman Andrews’ ‘Catalan Cuisine’: grating tomatoes (on the biggest ‘teeth’ of a manual cheese-grater). It takes moments, and you are instantly most of the way to a tomato sauce (or anything that needs ‘pulverised’ tomatoes). I honestly think it takes less time than getting a machine out, and the cleaning is a lot simpler too…
Oof, I had HG and a lot of this really resonates with me! I had a very strict routine of eating cereal and the grumpy local newsagent used to go to different cash and carries to find the sweets I was able to eat (he clearly wasn’t as grumpy as he appeared and I never asked him to do this). Such a great feeling when I could eat good food again. Wishing you well with the last few weeks of pregnancy.
Thank you so much for this piece, Olivia. I also experienced HG in both my pregnancies (am currently still in the 2nd one), and was told by the Vittles editors your piece was coming up – it is a pleasure to read it, though unsurprisingly it also almost reduced me to tears. The ice cubes, the nausea replacing your personality, the torture of trying to eat, your own kitchen being a no-go area: it's all too familiar.
I'm so grateful for anything where HG is more talked about and is getting more attention so thank you Vittles and Olivia for this.
Also a reminder to anyone else suffering with it and/or having trouble getting hold of the medication they need, Pregnancy Sickness Support are an amazing charity who are there to help: https://pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk.
Olivia, I hope it's well in the past for you, and congratulations getting through two HG pregnancies!
Such a beautiful piece of writing. Pregnancy is strange, magical, transformative... and horrendous in equal measure... I did not have HG during my pregnancies, but suffered from very extreme food aversions for most of my first. I could not face eating almost all foods at some point - meat in almost any form, all fruit, cooked vegetables... I would cook whole meals and be unable to eat them or even be in the room with them. The sight of food in packaging was overwhelming. I had to leave some supermarkets because the smell of the meat from standing at the front door was too much.
The things I could stomach, reliably, were not even bland food - egg mayonnaise sandwiches, anything heaped (HEAPED) with mustard, processed cheese slices and thai curry (green only). At one point, I was eating these same foods almost daily because everything else was unthinkable. A friend of mine used to stand at the petrol pump inhaling the smell of petrol to calm her nausea.
I loved these words Olivia, thanks for sharing this. As someone working in the world of food who has recently experienced the tiniest fraction of what you have been going through (I am pregnant but not suffering with HG) - you describe the alienating, suffocating feeling of not being able to trust all one’s favourite things so well. I am thrilled you’re feeling better with meds and I wish you the best for the final few weeks and beyond. Rosie x
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“Puking was in fact the best part of my day, since at least then I had a brief respite” - this so relatable I feel like I could have written it myself!
It is a bizarre and distressing experience to wake up one day and find yourself repulsed even by the idea of food let alone having to look at it, touch it, smell it or taste it. I suffered from HG and dysgeusia for the whole nine months in my first pregnancy. At one point I remember being scared to leave my house in case I caught a whiff of the neighbours cooking dinner (normally something that would make me stop and linger, to try and decipher what might be on the menu). I survived on tomato soup and bread with the occasional bit of cheese, and I was sad and terrified the whole time, that the joy and pleasure of eating would never come back to me…but it did and it does!
I’m currently two months postpartum from my second baby, and this time around I was insatiable for any and everything, but I couldn’t enjoy it really because every morning I woke up with the fear and anxiety, that today might be the day that HG reared its ugly head again. To my relief it didn’t.
Thanks for articulating this - it is reassurance for any people going through the lonely and traumatic experience of it, and also for those of us who have been through it before - we were never alone…
Wishing you all the best for the rest of your pregnancy!
Being male, I can only empathise. How frightful…. The drugs must work, though, if you could stomach Parmesan!
I will pass on a great tip I stole from Colman Andrews’ ‘Catalan Cuisine’: grating tomatoes (on the biggest ‘teeth’ of a manual cheese-grater). It takes moments, and you are instantly most of the way to a tomato sauce (or anything that needs ‘pulverised’ tomatoes). I honestly think it takes less time than getting a machine out, and the cleaning is a lot simpler too…