My Weirdest Pregnancy Craving: What It Taught Me About My Picky Eater
It was 2:17 a.m. when I gave in. I was 28 weeks pregnant with my oldest son, my hips ached, and every inch of my mouth was begging for something salty, sour, and grainy—nothing I had in the fridge sounded right until I remembered the half-empty jar of dill pickles my sister had left behind three days earlier. I padded down the hall in fuzzy socks that had holes in the toes, past the crib where my 2-year-old daughter was sleeping, and dug the jar out of the back of the fridge. Cold condensation ran down my wrist as I poured two cups of brine into a mixing bowl, then grabbed the open bag of yellow cornmeal from the pantry and stirred in a heaping cup, leaving it lumpy and grainy. I leaned against the linoleum counter and ate the whole thing right out of the bowl, no forks needed, letting the salty sour grit dissolve on my tongue. When I was done, I just rinsed my hands, left the bowl on the counter, and went back to bed. That was my weirdest pregnancy craving, and for years, it was just a silly story I told at baby showers.
My husband joked about it at breakfast the next morning, my OB brushed it off as normal hormone-driven weirdness, suggested I add a little extra salt to my dinners and move on. I did. My son was born healthy, hit all his milestones on time, and for the first year of solids, everything went fine. It wasn’t until he hit 18 months that the labels started: picky eater. stubborn. fussy. Daycare teachers mentioned he left half his lunch every day. My mother-in-law gently suggested I stop letting him only eat crackers and raw apples. The pediatrician said it was a phase, just keep offering new foods and don’t give in to his demands. I tried everything: hiding pureed spinach in his muffins, forcing one bite of every new food, cutting vegetables into fun dinosaur shapes to entice him. Nothing worked. He’d gag on mashed potatoes, push away steamed carrots, and leave slices of banana on his plate untouched. All he wanted was crisp, grainy, salty, or sour food. I couldn’t figure out why he was so different from my daughter, who ate anything put in front of her.
It all clicked on a rainy Saturday when I was reorganizing the pantry. I’d set an open bag of cornmeal on the counter to dump into a storage container, and stepped away to grab a paper towel off the other counter. When I turned back, three-year-old my son was standing on a step stool, one hand in the cornmeal bag, the other stirring a cup of leftover pickle brine he’d fished out of the recycling. He had cornmeal crumbs all down his front, and he was scooping the lumpy mixture up with his fingers and shoveling it into his mouth, grinning. I stood there for a full minute, stunned. That was exactly what I’d eaten that 2 a.m. night, three and a half years earlier.
I’d read before that the flavors of what you eat during pregnancy seep into amniotic fluid, and babies swallow that fluid, building their first preferences for taste and texture before they’re even born. I always thought that was just a fun little fact, not something that would actually shape who my kid was. Suddenly, his “picky eating” didn’t look like stubborn bad behavior anymore. It looked like a sensory preference he’d been born with, not something I’d done wrong or something he was doing to annoy me. That shifted everything.
I stopped forcing one bite of every new food, because I realized that pressure just makes kids associate mealtime with stress, and makes them more likely to reject food they might otherwise try. Instead, I started putting one “safe” food on his plate every meal—something with the texture he likes, usually crackers, raw carrot sticks, or corn chips—no questions asked. He never leaves the table hungry, which takes away the big fight. Instead of hiding vegetables in his food, I started putting one small bite of whatever new food we’re having on the edge of his plate, and I don’t say anything about it. If he wants to touch it or taste it, he can. If not, it goes in the leftovers. I also started letting him adjust the texture of his food any way he wants. If he wants to crumble corn chips into his soup, that’s fine. If he wants to leave his apple raw instead of cooking it into sauce, that’s fine. I let him help mix and prep his own snacks sometimes, which gives him control over what he’s eating, and he’s way more willing to try new combinations that way.
It’s been four years since that rainy Saturday. My son is seven now, and he still mixes up that weird pickle brine and cornmeal snack once every couple of weeks, usually after soccer practice when he’s craving salt. He still won’t eat pudding, mashed bananas, or any sort of mushy cooked vegetable. We get the side comments from other parents at cookouts and birthday parties, the little comments about how picky he is, how I should just make him eat what’s served. I don’t stress about it anymore. He eats a balanced diet, he’s growing perfectly, and he’s never been a kid who makes a big fuss—he just knows what he likes.
That weird, embarrassing pregnancy craving I had didn’t just give me a funny story. It taught me that a lot of the kid behaviors we label as bad or problematic are just parts of who they are, rooted in things we can’t even control, that started long before they took their first bite of solid food. We don’t have to fix every “weird” preference a kid has. Most of the time, we just have to meet them where they are, and let them be themselves.
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