«Cravings» in Pregnancy

«Ever since I stopped being afraid of throwing up, and so got past the nausea, I've rediscovered the pleasure of eating; in fact, sometimes I feel an irresistible desire for certain foods that even makes me go out to buy them. Still, even though I sometimes feel almost obliged to indulge myself with food, I haven't gone back to the gluttonous habits of my childhood, so fortunately I haven't put on too much weight and I don't live with guilt over it!»

Here Lara is referring to the well-known «cravings» of pregnancy, that is, the intense desire for a particular food that arises suddenly and sometimes drives the woman (and the people around her!) into a frantic search just to satisfy it.

According to a popular saying, if a craving is not satisfied and the woman touches a part of her body, a mark, the «voglia», may appear on that same part of the baby's body, in the same color as the food that was desired.

So «voglia» is both a synonym for the mother's desire and for the mark that becomes inscribed, made concrete, on her child's body.

But where does this excessive desire for a particular food come from? From a psychological point of view, it is linked to the complex, ambivalent relationship that binds a pregnant woman to her child. As we have seen, the fertilized egg from which the future baby will develop is a foreign body for the mother, and her body biologically attempts to reject it in order to eliminate it.

In some women, these strong, unconscious, aggressive desires, aimed at the baby on the way, turn into their exact opposite: into an excessive love that seeks to incorporate the very object toward which they are directed. Unknowingly, these desires are redirected onto food, which at an unconscious level is an equivalent of the baby, particularly certain foods that draw the pregnant woman's attention.

«Too much love for food» (craving certain foods obsessively, or eating continuously, justified by the claim of wanting to nourish the baby well, to make them big and healthy) can lead to excessive weight gain in the mother, with resulting complications that can also affect the fetus, in some cases even putting its life at risk. It can also represent an oral aggression toward the baby-as-food, one so intensely desired that it must be possessed. But possessing someone means denying them the possibility of an independent life: this is what happens to children who are smothered by their mother's excessive, exaggerated love, a love that is tragically pathological.

In other cases, however, the unconscious desire to reject the embryo (unconsciously replaced by food) shows itself more directly, through revulsion toward certain foods. For some women this can go as far as refusing to eat at all, putting the continuation of the pregnancy and the development of the embryo/fetus at risk.

These are opposite situations, but they are driven by the same unconscious aggressive desires toward the baby being carried, desires that in both cases find in food a favored substitute. The consequences that follow are also similar, showing that both a lack of love and an excess of it (which turns into possessiveness) are equally harmful to the survival and wellbeing of the baby to come.