... it smells like pregnancy

Back in December, when I was about seven point five months pregnant, I developed really intense pica cravings having to do with smell. Pica, according to americanpregnancy.org, is "the practice of craving substances of little or no nutritional value during pregnancy". That it is described as a "practice" is a little odd, because it is definitely not something that one sets out to do, like meditating or providing legal advice for a fee. It's more like a bizarre compulsive habit that creeps up on your mind and then becomes a near-constant distraction. Women with pica desire a variety of things, many inedible, like bricks, cigarette butts, paint chips, soap. I've read more than a few internet testimonials in which pregnant women waxed rhapsodic about ice or expounded upon the strange hold magic markers had on them. (I myself deeply understand the allure of the Sharpie.) In my case, I didn't crave bowls full of freezer frost or the taste of the sidewalk; the pica I practiced was all about the nose. Suddenly, near the end of my second pregnancy (nothing like this had ever happened in the first), I just couldn't get enough of certain very chemical, very fume-y smells:

The garage - oily car engine, huge cans of paint, cardboard boxes: heaven.
Wood furniture shops - varnish: delicious.
Books - especially phone books.
Firelighters - these I would think about, but would only very rarely allow myself a sniff.
Wet paint - I was a moth to the flame of my friends' newly-painted burglar bars.

Sunlight brand lemon dishwashing powder - amazing.
Newspapers - especially the glossy holiday advertising inserts.

I found myself wondering if we had any Whiteout in our filing cabinet, but I didn't actually search for any. It didn't seem prudent to add any more neuron-vanquishing temptations into my life. I also started reminiscing about this games/stationary closet that our neighbors had in their house when I was a kid. It smelled so good. I could stand in there in the dim light, among the jigsaw puzzles and the construction paper and the Trivial Pursuits (Junior and Genus editions), and never see any reason to leave. It was a very blissful place for me.

This last pregnancy brought about other olfactory oddities as well: Something about the taste of chicken began to remind me of the smell of fish and I had to stop eating it (chicken). Water smelled really intense to me, and then plastic things, like our telephone, began to smell like water. All of this was so powerful at the time that I couldn't imagine it all going away once the baby was born. I thought something in my brain had been altered permanently. But, of course, I was wrong. I sniffed the dishwashing detergent the other day out of plain curiosity and nearly choked to death on a tiny cloud of toxic lemon dust. It was horrendous.