This is a question for those of you who have borne children: Was there any food or condiment that especially disagreed with you in the first half of your pregnancy? I'm looking for something you could ask the server to tell the chef to leave out of a dish or off a sandwich when you went to a restaurant. What happened if you forgot and ate it anyway? Was it the sort of result you could make into a funny story to tell on yourself? This is just a minor bit of color in my WIP, but I want to get it right.
I have never been pregnant, but I have talked about it with a lot of people who have. Everyone says different things bothered them. My friends mom told me that when she was pregnant, even looking at pepper jack cheese made her want to puke.. but only pepper jack, no other cheese bothered her. I would suggest just picking something random based on what kind of restaurant it is and just have your MC feel sick all of a sudden, or something along those lines.
There's a site called BabyCenter (that I read despite having no children because it has one of the best forums about toxic families). If you Google barycenter pregnancy "food aversion" I'll bet that you'll find a flood of information.
I had hyperemesis gravidarum, which means everything disagreed with me! It was not so much a question of what to avoid eating so as not to vomit, but what combinations did I really not want to clean up later. Avocado and anything is not fun to clean up, but avocado and dried apricots is particularly disgusting. Red grapes make a light fluffy, Pepto Bismol looking vomit. High fiber foods like shredded wheat are hard on the throat coming back up. Foods packed in oil like marinated artichoke hearts or sun-dried tomatoes came up just fine. The mere smell of smoked oysters was enough to make me toss my cookies.
Also--every woman is different and every pregnancy is different. With child 1 I really liked more Mediterranean foods, child 2 just wanted chocolate. The puke factor was different for each of them too, so it probably doesn't matter what you have her order or omit. Someone, somewhere would have experienced it.
I just had a constant yucky feeling for the first 4-5 months. It's hard to explain, but it wasn't the usual kind of nausea. I didn't throw up a lot but I chewed on a lot of candied ginger because it made my stomach feel less yucky.
My wife is currently pregnant. In the first few months she had nausea. She lost her interest in gold fish crackers, which was her favorite snack. Back pain 7 months through current. She is scheduled toll pop about 1 month from now. Not many food specific details. But back pain is an accurate trait for your character.
With my first child, anything with tomato was off the table. Pizza was out completely. Could not hold it down. And I could not stand the smell of popcorn or coffee. Even walking by the coffee aisle in the grocery store would kill me. Drinking it or having a cup of it in the same room as me was a big no (and I was in college - everyone was downing the stuff. My roommate had his own cappuccino machine that was running 24/7). The second was much easier - I didn't really have morning sickness with her - but I'd still get blergh with anything particularly strong - like onions or tomatoes or pickles. If it smelled strong or tasted strong, it was upsetting. I stuck to bland foods for a while.
When I was preggers with spawn number 1, she made it impossible for me to walk past the meat case in any grocery store, smell meat cooking, or handle raw meat. It persisted the entire pregnancy. Violent, I mean, horrendous, exorcism level vomit. I love meat. It was a waking nightmare.
I clicked "like" on your post not because I like exorcism level vomiting, but because the description, the imagery, we very committed on your part. Important to commit to one's imagery and not shy away.
