I want, I crave, I salivate thinking of eating a spoonful of wet sand. I would love to eat a couple pieces of chalk.
I want these things more than anything else. More than pickles or ice cream, more than pizza or french fries. Nothing sounds as good to eat as sand and chalk. I’d even settle for the shavings of a gritty rock… like the one I craved when I was pregnant with Leyna.
It sounds so strange to you, I know. And to me, when I would try to explain how I “used to have pica” to people, when I was past it, it was so strange to me, too. But now? In this moment? It makes total sense in my head. Why wouldn’t people eat sand and chalk? Why don’t those things sound delicious to others?
*sigh*
This is bizarre, and yet it’s not… to me.
Of course, I’m not acting on it. OF COURSE, I’ll tell my midwife about it at my appointment next week, and my blood will be checked for iron levels again, and I’ll keep taking supplements and cooking everything in a cast iron skillet. I’ll keep requesting steak whenever I get the chance, and adding a side of leafy greens or broccoli.
But, I don’t think it will go away. I did everything I could when I was pregnant with Leyna to try to get it to go away. My iron levels were never dangerously low, but still it was there -the constant, strong desire to eat earth, rocks, sand, dirt, which started around 6 months pregnant. Right where I’m at now.
Quite a few of you asked when I posted about Kendall’s rock jar a couple weeks ago if I was craving those rocks in that jar. And I wasn’t. Then. I’m still not, not those rocks. Not really rocks at all this time… so far.
But soon after, I found myself thinking, “Wow, I bet the sandy dirt at the bottom of that river would taste really good.” And then, on our rainy drive home from St. Louis, I couldn’t stop dreaming of wet, sandy dirt along the side of the road. Cracker Barrel couldn’t hold a candle.
So it’s back – this weird obsession that makes everyone but me cringe. Because to me it makes total sense. Why wouldn’t I want to eat chalk and sand? That’s like someone asking me why I wouldn’t want to eat a red velvet cupcake. That’s just absurd, of course I’d eat that.
Except I won’t. Yet.