The concept of “eating for two” is one of the most common cliches about pregnancy. Alas, most people couldn’t subsist on the meager 300 extra calories a day pregnant women are really supposed to consume. Or, as one pregnant friend put it after being bombarded with food from her pushy mother-in-law: “The second person weighs less than five pounds and gets full pretty quickly.”

It turns out that 300 calories equal half a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk. Or one and a half candy bars. Either way, it’s not much. Which is depressing, really, because how often does one get to throw caution to the wind and have a guilt-free second piece of cake? Unless you’re my 11-year-old and it’s a day ending in “y,” the answer is “only during pregnancy.”

I really, truly intended to create an optimal nutritional environment during this pregnancy. In the months leading up to it, I started drinking more water, taking pre-natal vitamins, decreasing my junk food consumption, and increasing my fruit and veggie intake. This regimen lasted a whole two weeks into the actual pregnancy. At that point I realized I was already giving up alcohol, sushi, bleu cheese, sprouts (yes, they’re unsafe, and yes, I really ate them), coffee, and any vaguely sketchy leftovers in my fridge. By golly, I wasn’t giving up my one true love: sugar.

Ironically, during the early months, my sweet tooth took a hike, and I found myself craving meat and salty snacks—both of which are exotic foreign territory. In my experience, people are usually “sweets” people or “salty” people: they either go for a pastry or a bagel for breakfast, cookies or chips for a snack, etc. Rarely do people enjoy both tastes equally, and rarely does a “sweets” person get to experience life as a “salty” and vice versa. Well, this was one such rare opportunity, and I intended to take full advantage of it.

I found myself being inexplicably drawn to things like barbecue potato chips and hot sauce and fast-food burgers. Suddenly, I was exploring whole new aisles of the grocery store. And one night I gave my mother a heart attack when I called and prefaced a request with, “Mom, thank goodness you’re home. I really need your help.” Later, I felt bad for having scared her, but at the time, it really was an emergency: I needed to know how to make a tuna melt, and I simply couldn’t go on living another minute without it. Sorry, Mom.

Fortunately, my sweet tooth came back around the second trimester, and all was right with the world. Things are tricky again in the third trimester, as I’m unable to eat as much as I did the last eight months. I thought that might be a good thing, but I’ve found it just forces me to work that much harder to fit my cravings in. For example, one night when my husband and son were gone over the dinner hour—leaving me with a rare opportunity to fix the exact meal I wanted—I treated my limited appetite to a salad followed by a brownie sundae.

Fortunately, my husband has always been amused by the way I eat. In my defense, I told him that I was just getting the baby used to how it works in our house: a little nutrition, chased by a truckload of empty calories. Hopefully, this new baby will have the metabolism to keep up with the rest of the family.  tpw