Craving comfort

'I would sit with a cup full of ice-cold water, or ice cubes – and crunch them while I watched TV. It drove my partner mad.'

'My main cravings were tinned rice pudding and toasted buttery crumpets – nothing too odd in that. But a friend of mine used to hang around ironmonger shops to sniff new doorknobs. '

'I craved toothbrushes. I was shopping in the supermarket one day when I came to the toiletries and was drawn by some magnetic force to the toothbrush section. They had to be of a firm texture and I sat and chewed them. It was like having a comforter and anywhere I went, the toothbrush came with me. Unfortunately, this craving hasn’t left me since. '

More sniffers

'I desperately wanted to eat black shoe polish during my second pregnancy. Luckily I resisted, but I did enjoy sniffing it. Once my doctor had stopped laughing, he confirmed that inhaling shoe polish was harmless.'

'I craved persil washing tablets. My mum and boyfriend used to watch in amazement as I sat on the sofa with a box of persil tablets, sniffing away.'

'I had an overwhelming desire to smell petrol fumes and aerosol wood polish. During the last weeks of my pregnancy, I had the cleanest table you’ve ever seen.'

'At the moment I love the smell of any cleaning products – bleach, loo cleaner, Dettol, even washing up liquid. When I do my weekly shopping I stand in the supermarket and smell all the different bottles.'

'My weirdest craving was for the dust on the unsurfaced road near my mother's house. I had an overwhelming urge to lick the road.'

'Thank God there are like-minded sniffers out there. I just can't help sniffing everything, particularly soil. On a hot day, when we’ve had a sudden shower of rain, the smell of wet soil sends me crazy. My mother tells me I used to eat it as a baby, maybe I was a worm in a past life. '

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