Scent, sense and motherhood

Pregnancy and motherhood is a priming experience for the sense of smell.

Early in my second pregnancy, I was waiting in line at a cafe, a mum wheeled her newborn in pram past me a few metres away. Well, I could SMELL that potent baby flesh, I was like a bloodhound.

We have an incredible power to understand our environment through smell, and clearly an enhanced sense of smell is vital to our child-bearing years. Nothing in my life has ever tasted as good as food during my first pregnancy. A heightened gourmand sensibility made my husband's glazed chicken stir fry an ecstatic experience; it was joyous. The smell of my daughter's breath is coriander leaf, which is fresh and pleasing to me. When she is unwell, I can smell the change on her skin first.

Then there is the scent of your baby's head. Pure subliminal mindfuckery, the pheromones are working on your limbic ancient brain before you are even conscious of it. You are reacting in your own hormonal way before you compute the smell itself in your consciousness. The odour itself is lackluster, of skin and sweet sweat, of feint milk and hair, its all animal and all softness and roundness, but it's the pheromonal background that is really working its magic here.

Our primal association of skin and bodily smells to procreation, pleasure and survival are exploited in high end perfumery that uses civet, musk, ambergris and castoreum; secretions of animals that impart a subliminal intimacy and closeness that we impulsively react to without even it registering as scent per se. Even the so-called narcotic florals of jasmine, orange blossom, gardenia and freesia contain indoles, a natural chemical compound shared with faeces, a reminder of the proximity of intimacy and excretion.

For me personally this priming experience of motherhood on my sense of smell was part of my journey towards natural perfumery. If you’re reading this it’s probably because you yourself are on a journey of motherhood, perhaps you too have noticed the increased importance of scent and smell in your life, but not considered how it can be a deeply personal experience that also opens the potential for the deep pleasures of scent.