The hunger that first alerted me to my pregnancy continues and and has grown to absurd proportions.

When it comes on at full strength, it is deafening, driving out all other thought other than itself. It is so insistent that I cannot think about anything except that I MUST. HAVE. FOOD. RIGHT. NOW. On the days when I have gone out to buy a sandwich for my second lunch, I have found myself wondering, on the way back, whether it is really necessary to wait until I’m all the way back in the office… perhaps I could tear into the sandwich right there and then, in the street. It feels like I have been starving for many days, whereas in fact about two, possibly two and a half hours have passed since I last ate.

I eat four full meals a day – breakfast, lunch, another lunch, dinner. In fact if you count all the snacks as well, I probably eat about eight times a day. Or actually, to be more precise, I eat pretty much all the time. Not only am I hungry, but my blood sugar level seems to be doing funny things. I need injections of sugar quite frequently, so I eat lots of fruit.

Pre-breakfast snack (a yoghurt or some dry cereal)
Breakfast (double sandwich, orange juice)
Fruit
Mid-morning snack (banana / yoghurt / müllerice / cereal bar)
Lunch
Fruit
Afternoon snack
Another lunch
Fruit
Dinner
Late evening snack

No cravings, thus far. A strong preference for dairy, fruit and vegetables, even more marked than usual – if that’s possible after 15 years of vegetarian living. I used to eat seafood occasionally, maybe once every one or two weeks, and fish maybe once a month. I haven’t wanted any fish at all in the past few weeks. Yoghurt in particular feels very good. When I am hungry but have a feeling that I don’t really want to eat, if you see what I mean, a yoghurt awakens the appetite very nicely. Raw fruit and veg likewise. Carrots… fruit juice… mmm.

On the other hand I have lost all taste for high-calorie snacks: sweets, chocolate, chips, cakes. I had been trying to gain weight for a while through regular consumption of chocolate croissants and cakes. The weight gain effort was rather unsuccessful in the end, but it gave me a habit of afternoon cakes. That is now completely gone. I tried potato chips the other day, didn’t like the taste at all, and gave up after two of them.

I haven’t felt any real nausea either, for which I am very grateful. I do feel an almost constant low-level queasiness, but that’s probably due to this constant eating and the fluctuations in blood sugar. Sharp juicy fruits, such as mandarins, seem to help.