I’m 11 weeks pregnant with my second baby, and my husband smells so bad to me. This didn’t happen last pregnancy. His breath, body odor, everything stinks. I hold my breath when I kiss or hug him. I know it’s related to hormones and heightened smell, but why is this? When does it go away? How common is it? Anything I can do?
––Holding my breath
The idea that pregnancy enhances your sense of smell is a common one. And it feels like it would make sense — somehow logically, it seems like our bodies should have more of a sense of disgust to help us avoid things that would make us sick.
However: actual evidence on this is mixed. This paper (for example) started with a sample of 100 women. Researchers tested their sense of smell, using a standard test where you smell strips with different odors and report what they are. Pregnancy did not enhance performance on this test — that is, the ability to identify smells didn’t improve. On the other hand, women in their first trimester in particular reported smells being more intense, and 90% of the women said that some smells were unpleasant.
A 2022 review article and meta-analysis puts together a lot of data to say more or less the same thing. There is limited evidence of impacts on standard measures of sense of smell. But the majority of pregnant women do report a heightened sense of smell and, especially, seem to be more likely to find odors aversive.
We have no concrete idea why this is. The review article goes through several possible explanations, including the higher levels of the hormone hCG in pregnancy increasing smell sensitivity, and various theories about protective effects. But we do not know for sure, and there may be a combination of issues.
There is probably nothing you can do. Even in that academic review article, they discuss heightened sensitivity to your partner’s breath. So you are really not alone. Beyond asking him to shower more and brush his teeth again, you may have to just wait it out. The first trimester seems to be the worst for these perceptions, so I hope it improves soon.
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How is the data inconclusive on this?! This was one of my strongest symptoms in the first trimester. I could smell the kitchen when I got hallway down the hallway. I smelled garlic as soon as my husband entered the room, even though he just came out of the shower. We finally figured out the culprit was hummus and once he stopped eating that, the garlic problem that had been plaguing us for weeks ended.
*halfway down the hallway