Why we want to eat baby feet 👣 (a lesson learned on my first BayCation)
or: an argument to sometimes not eat intuitively 🫢
🎧 Click play to hear me reading this to you, unfiltered, unedited, and in my underwear. ⬇
It was 4:00 a.m. when the epiphany hit. I was sitting in a well-worn leather chair, basking in the electric glow of my breast pump’s teal blue light, with the satisfying sound of milk drip-drip-dripping from my left, ripe-as-a-Farmer’s-Market-orange teet. I was feeling perplexed, disappointed, and remorseful even that our annual beach vacation—the one for which I, with tears streaming down my face, always start counting down the days until the moment the Massachusetts island fades out of view—wasn’t filling me up emotionally as it had every summer prior. Nantucket had always been my soul’s Shell station. (HA). Each time I visit, it refills my depleted tank with pleasure and optimism to last until my return.
But this year was different.
Nothing was feeling or tasting as vivid. Humongous overstuffed beach sandwiches from a bakery whose logo we have bumper-stickered to our car like we’re Dead Heads Bread Heads were unmemorable. Fresh sparkling cocktails made with farm-to-table blueberry vodka were lackluster. Even the island’s famous homemade vegan ice cream in a warm waffle cup cone (for which I’ve been known to stand in line for 45 minutes cheerfully) was meh.
Though there’s *not yet* a DSM diagnosis for ice cream apathy, I know myself. And I know that my losing enjoyment in this particular ice cream should be as concerning as chest pain. Or at least an asymmetric mole.
I’ve found that the most significant mental health challenge for me is less the challenge itself and more the identification of the root.
Like, I’ve become pretty stealthy at recognizing when a pair of jeans feels off, but I’m not as savvy at determining if I feel uncomfortable because they shrank or I grew. And periodically, I’ll doubt if I’m entirely misremembering how they used to fit or if these jeans are my jeans in the first place…
So as I lay in bed at 4:50 AM, trying to fall back asleep after dispensing Hannah’s next meal like my breasts are pre-programmed drip-coffee makers, I replay an exchange with my mom.
Earlier in the day, she had turned to me and said, “I used to get so offended when someone said they wanted to eat my baby’s toes. What a thing to say. What kind of a monster would fantasize about such a thing?”
She lightly caressed Hannah’s feet, which were as chubby as her little cheeks.
“But now I get it. Because I really want to gnaw on these tiny toesies!”
“Oh, I know,” I answered. “Trust me. It takes extraordinary willpower not to grill these up and eat them with barbecue sauce! I barely have interest in other food anymore.”
Ahh, there it is. I thought to myself. I’ll bet ice cream doesn’t taste as yummy because my baby girl Hannah is the MOST mouthwatering! She has raised the bar. By comparison, nothing is as good, enjoyable, or impressive to me. Everything—even ice cream—pales in comparison.
It took me a few days of wearing these ill-fitting jeans (that I’m using as a metaphor for vacation food not tasting as tantalizing as per usual), but finally, I got clarity on where to point the finger: at my baby’s tic tac toes. But rather than ask my psychiatrist if I’m exhibiting other symptoms of my old friend depression or conclude that all of the food on Nantucket must be… less good, I was able to uncover the cause for my newfound food apathy: or the ten causes.
And thought got me going down a bit of a rabbit hole. Did you know that it’s perfectly normal for people to want to binge-eat babies? This is why I love the internet. I found a couple of studies (God bless the scientists who secured grants to investigate “Why do mothers want to eat their children?”) that attempt to explain why brand-new babies have to watch their cute asses around adults in the kitchen…
One study said that our impulse to want to spread a baby on a cracker (known, apparently, as “cuteness aggression”) is comparable to the emotional release we get when we cry tears of joy. It’s a way that we can regulate our emotions. How I understand it, having an opposite emotion (feeling like a cannibal when we’re exploding with tenderness, for example) restores our emotional balance, so we don’t burst TOO much with love.
Thankfully, this means that wanting to put an infant’s foot in a pita pocket isn’t our body’s way of saying it’s sick of falafel. That really odd desire is more about wanting to be as close as possible to the yummy, yummy babe.
Another study suggests that an infant’s smell can trigger a physiological reaction in mommies similar to the physiological response we get from other addictive substances like drugs, coffee, sugar, or alcohol (or, in my case, dried mango). Our brain lighting up around a baby the way it does around a Burger King is essentially our system’s way of ensuring we’re addicted to our baby.
Of course, there were plenty of other articles about why we want to eat baby feet. (I couldn’t go *too* far down that rabbit hole!) As I was Googling and reading, Hannah started sucking on her hands. A hunger cue. Or self-awareness to tame her own cuteness aggression? I had to cut my search short to warm up her latte, but I’m sure if I’d kept going, I’d have seen recipes on Pinterest for paleo baby toes in a blanket, an op-ed in The New York Times about how desiring to eat baby toes is ableist, and a trailer for an upcoming Hulu documentary about the dad who took his fixation too far, aptly titled I Know What you Ate Last Supper…
Anyway, I’m relieved that I’ve found a silver lining in my neutrality toward sandwiches and indifference to ice cream. I am, thankfully, thoroughly in love with, addicted to, and in persistent hunger for my precious 4-month-old little girl.
