Week 9, Day 7. The day after I publicly congratulated myself for buying cottage cheese. Brooklyn. Baby is still — still — the size of a raspberry, and apparently judging me.
So here's the thing.
Yesterday I wrote a whole essay about choosing perspective over perfectionism. I bought the cottage cheese. I ate it with a raspberry on top like a magazine spread. I closed my laptop at a reasonable hour. The post went up. People said nice things. One person on Medium liked it, which — fine, not the point, but also: the point.
Today is Wednesday.
Today I opened the same tub at 8:30 AM, took one spoonful, put it in my mouth, and immediately understood that cottage cheese, as it turns out, tastes like wet drywall.
Not all the time. Not before. I have eaten cottage cheese my entire life. My mother put it on cantaloupe in the summer. I had it on toast in college. Two months ago I bought a tub from Trader Joe's and ate the whole thing standing at the counter while watching Jake assemble a bookshelf. It was fine. It was delicious. It was a thing I liked.
This morning my mouth said no.
8:31 AM, the spit-out
I didn't actually spit it out. I want to be clear about that, because I've been thinking about how I write about myself and I don't want to be the person who performs disgust for content. I did, however, hold it on my tongue for approximately four seconds with my eyes wide open, walk to the sink, and quietly let it go down the drain.
Then I rinsed my mouth with cold water for thirty seconds.
Then I stood at the kitchen window and laughed.
I am not gonna lie, I laughed for a real, long minute. The kind of laugh where you sit down on the floor because your knees stop working. Because — okay can we talk about this — yesterday's entire emotional arc was I bought the cottage cheese, the raspberry is fine, so am I. I built a whole scaffolding of perspective on top of that one tub. I told the internet I was choosing acceptance. I felt profound.
And the cottage cheese, in response, tasted like the inside of a sponge.
9:00 AM, Jake's reaction
Jake was already at his desk in the bedroom on a Zoom. I texted him from the kitchen because it felt urgent.
me: the cottage cheese tastes like wet drywall
me: i wrote 1100 words yesterday about it
me: this is a public scandal
jake: did you eat it
me: one spoon
jake: are you okay
me: i am laughing
jake: ok
jake: i ordered you a bagel
This is, I think, the relationship in nine words. I am laughing. Ok. I ordered you a bagel. Jake does not negotiate with pregnancy hormones. Jake gets bagels.
The bagel was an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese from the place on Bedford. I ate the whole thing at the kitchen table while looking at the cottage cheese tub like it had personally insulted me.
10:30 AM, the Reddit dive (controlled, this time)
Now — bear with me — I am the woman who learned, two days ago, to not spend eleven hours in a tracker spiral. So I want to say I handled this maturely.
I did not.
I went on r/BabyBumps and searched "cottage cheese aversion" and found one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven posts. One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven. The top one is from 2019 and the most-liked comment says "week 9 hit me like a truck and suddenly cottage cheese was the enemy."
Week 9.
I am, today, the last day of week 9.
I'm not saying this is a sign. I'm saying I sat on the kitchen floor with the bagel finished and my phone open and I read fourteen of those threads and felt, for the first time in this entire pregnancy, that I am unoriginal in a way that is genuinely comforting. Like — there is a global subreddit-shaped support group for women who, on a specific Wednesday in their ninth week, opened a perfectly good tub of cottage cheese and said no thank you, sir.
It's the most connected I've felt to strangers in months.
1:00 PM, the Mombite check (because I'm me)
I opened the recipe finder and filtered for "high choline, no cottage cheese." I am aware of how this sounds. The list came back: salmon (Friday), eggs (still off the table because of the smell thing), chickpeas (yes), edamame (no), peanuts (yes), milk (yes), Greek yogurt (today's experiment).
I bought a tub of plain Greek yogurt at the bodega at 1:30. I ate four spoonfuls with honey. It was fine. It was, in fact, good.
The aversion is specific. The aversion is small. The aversion is funny.
What I'm choosing not to spiral about today
I'm choosing not to spiral about:
- Whether the aversion will spread to other foods
- Whether my body is "rejecting" something it was supposed to like
- Whether yesterday's essay has now been rendered, by Wednesday lunch, completely false
That last one almost got me. I'll be honest. I sat there at like 11 AM thinking I should write a follow-up, I should correct the record, I should explain that the cottage cheese moment was complicated and the perspective wasn't real.
And then I thought: nope. The perspective was real on Tuesday. The cottage cheese tasted like drywall on Wednesday. Both of these are true. Pregnancy is, apparently, a series of small contradictions stacked on top of each other while a raspberry-sized creature changes the rules from the inside.
So I'm not correcting the record. I'm adding to it.
4:47 PM, current status
- The cottage cheese is in the fridge. I'm not throwing it out because Jake said he'd eat it on toast. (Jake is built different.)
- The Greek yogurt is now my whole personality.
- The raspberry is still the size of a raspberry, but tomorrow it becomes a prune, and I am — okay, fine — a little excited about that.
- I have not refreshed any tracker today. Not even once. Mostly because I forgot, which I'll take.
If you are nine weeks pregnant and you opened a tub of something safe and beloved this morning and your mouth said absolutely not — hi. We're in the same subreddit thread now. The wet drywall club. Membership is free. Greek yogurt is the snack.
I'll see you tomorrow. Week 10. Prune. The rules will change again.
— Em