Almost every mom has a story about strange pregnancy cravings, whether it's the classic pickles and ice cream or a more esoteric hunger (for some reason I craved red food while pregnant -- tomatoes, beets, strawberries, Twizzlers...). What (unborn) baby wants, baby gets, right?
But what happens when your cravings smack up against your ethics? For vegan and vegetarian moms-to-be, a sudden hankering for bacon can set off a crisis of conscience.
Natalie Portman, due with her first this summer, is the latest expecting mom to fall off the vegan wagon. She downgraded to vegetarianism after giving in to her cravings for eggs, dairy... and cake.
"I actually went back to being vegetarian when I became pregnant, just because I felt like I wanted that stuff," she said during a Monday phone interview with the Q100 Bert Show in Atlanta. "I was listening to my body to have eggs and dairy and that sort of stuff."
"If you're not eating eggs, then you can't have cookies or cake from regular bakeries, which can become a problem when that's all you want to eat," she said.
Amen to that, sister.
Parenting.com slideshow: Pregnancy cravings
She's not the first mom to ditch a restrictive diet once baby got on board. Heck, we've known hard-core PETA members who dumped the tofu in favor of cheeseburgers when their pregnancy cravings started calling the shots. What about you? What weird pregnancy cravings did you have? And if you were a vegan or vegetarian who started eating dairy or meat during pregnancy, did you go back to your non-carnivore ways after baby arrived?