My boss is pregnant. Very pregnant. Twins pregnant.

In the past few months, I’ve seen her body go through the changes that pregnancy brings. At first, she looked tired and thin, but her belly has grown a lot bigger. If she’s wearing light pants, it looks like a small, convex movie screen, and if you look closely, you can see the little gals kick. This is very cool, but the sardines are not.

Yes, I said sardines. They showed up early in the second trimester and haven’t left. One day, I was typing away, minding my own business, when I noticed a funny odor emanating from the desk to my left. I looked over and my boss quickly turned away. She was hiding something. All I could see was a little plastic bag full of Stoned Wheat Thins. Those couldn’t be the source, I thought. Then I caught a glimpse of the tin.

“You may want to leave for a little while,” she said as she lifted a forkful of oily fish onto a cracker. “Maybe you could go outside and get some fresh air.”

Fresh, sardine-free air was what I needed. When my mom was pregnant with me, all she wanted was milkshakes and fried clams. One of my other pregnant co-workers can’t get enough chocolate. Couldn’t my boss, who sits less than five feet away from me in an office with fairly stagnant air, crave something other than sardines?

Actually, she does. What she really wants is chocolate. And she’s quite curious about the cheese-stuffed breadsticks that I order for lunch sometimes. But the doctor said sardines, so sardines it is.

“Sardines are actually very high in iron and calcium,” said Lisa Futia, a registered, licensed dietitian at Eastern Maine Healthcare’s Diabetes, Endocrine and Nutrition Center in Bangor.

Though the fish were part of the doctor’s orders, many women crave foods that are high in iron, calcium and sodium, which can become depleted during pregnancy. There is some debate about the nutritional link to cravings, but it would make the pickles-and-ice-cream combination a little easier to understand.

“Cravings are real, but do not indicate a nutrient deficiency,” said Georgia Clark-Albert, a registered, licensed dietitian at St. Joseph Healthcare’s Diabetes and Nutrition Center. “One recent client of mine had a craving for Slim Jims and pickles. Others have craved strawberries, frozen blueberries, vinegar, asparagus, and anything grape – juice, soda or candy.”

These seem tame when compared with cravings associated with pica, an eating disorder that can occur during pregnancy. Pica, pronounced PEE-kah, is the compulsion to eat items that have little or no nutritional value. Rather than crave pickles, ice cream or Slim Jims, women suffering from pica would rather eat burnt matches, excessive amounts of ice cubes, hair, gravel, clay, raw starch, charcoal, baking soda, coffee grounds, mothballs, soap, or tire inner tubes.

“It actually creates some high-risk pregnancies,” Futia said. “The medical implications of pica aren’t understood.”

It has been suggested that pica stems from tradition. It’s a condition that is often passed from mother to daughter, but it is unclear whether the connection is based in superstition, iron or calcium deficiency, or the idea that ingesting nonfood substances will quell morning sickness. Pregnant women should contact their doctor if they have any such cravings.

While pica can threaten the health of mother and child, junk food cravings don’t. It’s OK to scarf down a bag of chips every once in a while, Clark-Albert said. Especially if it will help ease nausea.

“Many women don’t allow themselves to eat junk food when they get a craving for it,” Clark-Albert said. “The overwhelming reason for this is guilt that they are doing something that will harm their baby. … If you are eating and vomiting, and taking medication to minimize the vomiting, this may be more harmful to the baby and mother.”

More than 70 percent of pregnant women suffer from morning sickness, according to the National Women’s Health Information Center, most often in the first trimester.

The center recommends eating small meals, drinking fluids between, but not with, meals, and avoiding greasy, fried or spicy foods. In addition, Clark-Albert said women should ask themselves which liquid or solid food would relax their nausea.

Some factors to consider are a food’s consistency, taste (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or tart), temperature, flavor (spicy or bland) and moisture content. Then, she suggests, women should ask themselves three questions: Would something sweet lessen or eliminate my nausea? What food or beverage, no matter how strange, appeals to me? If I could quickly and easily obtain this item, would I be able to eat it?

“Whatever works to limit nausea and allow you to keep food down, use it,” Clark-Albert said.

Getting enough to eat during pregnancy, and enough of the right nutrients, benefits both mother and child. The Women’s Health Information Center states that pregnant women should be sure to increase their consumption of calcium-rich foods, drink plenty of fluids and get enough sodium (2,000 to 8,000 milligrams), which isn’t too hard to do. Women who are or who are trying to become pregnant should eat foods rich in folic acid, including kidney beans, leafy green vegetables, peas and liver.

During pregnancy, women can develop iron-deficiency anemia, which could explain sudden cravings for “manly portions of meat,” Futia said.

Iron can also be found in dried apricots, soybeans, spinach, potatoes, peas, oatmeal, molasses, sunflower seeds and cashews, according to “Nutrition in Pregnancy and Lactation,” a textbook by Bonnie Worthington Roberts and Sue Rodwell Williams. For calcium, the book lists fortified orange juice, molasses cookies, almonds, salmon, milk, and cheese as good sources.

Cravings or not, women need to increase the amount of food they eat per day. Rather than eat twice as much, or “eat for two,” the Women’s Health Information Center says an extra 300 calories a day should suffice. While it’s better not to gain too much weight, pregnant women shouldn’t restrict their diet to keep weight gain at bay, because the baby may not get the protein, vitamins and minerals it needs.

“During pregnancy, your body is going to pull nutrients from your body to give to the child,” Clark-Albert said.

So if sardines are what it takes to keep my boss’s babies healthy, then far be it from me to complain. I’ll just go out for lunch.