In my transition from all-day sickness (mornings, evenings, nights), I developed an acute sense of smell.
As it is, I’m usually pretty sensitive to smoke, perfumes or strong odours. It irritates my nose and my tip of the nose kinds of bristles. I’ll keep rubbing till I have a pink/red tip of the nose like Rudolph.
With the hormones coming into full-play and taking over, I was extremely sensitive to smells.
The lunch meals my colleagues took smelt like puke. But I had to withstand it because actually, it doesn’t smell like that. I was just more in-tuned to the different notes of spices that exist. My own food probably smelt the same!
I couldn’t go into a food court without being hit by an overwhelming sensory explosion (in a bad way). I resorted to covering my nose while buying my food. Someone’s BO became extremely repulsive (even more so than normal!). Cigarette smoke sent me into a rage (and my husband’s a smoker plus I’m surrounded by the lingering stale smoke smell from colleagues’ who do smoke). On normal days, my sense of smell was already sensitive. On pregnancy days (which is 3/4 of the year!), it’s evolved massively.
The first time I realised my sense of smell was heightened was when I opened the home pantry door. That’s where we store onions, dried foods, eggs etc There was this pungent smell everytime I opened the door and no one could smell it but me. I thought something had died inside and was adamant something really did!
No one in the family smelt it.I withstand it for a week and covered my nose if I had to take something from there. One day, I decided to investigate and put my trusty nose to the test. I poked around corners, looked in between narrow holes and under stuff just to make sure nothing died. Then I smelt everything in there – including the clothes pegs, washing machine, eggs, cupboards. Then I found it.
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It was a basket of garlic cloves which emitted that pungent smell!!! Not the big red onions, not the eggs, but these cloves!
I was relieved to finally find the source. Phew. At least, now I know what’s causing that pungent smell. I never used to smell it this strong…no one else smelt it except me.
It took a while for my nose to get used to the smell though. But finding out the offensive source put a smile on my face. If only I can say the same when I open the fridge…
Little one, this is for you. 