DH wants me to eat meat!

[ElizabethForever]

I have been a vegan my entire life. My parents are vegans and my siblings are. My husband is mainly vegan as I do the food shopping and cooking. I have never stopped him eating the food he wants to eat however anything containing animal products in the garage (we have a fridge/freezer out there).
I am in the very very early stages of pregnancy and since we found our DH keeps making hints that I should be eating meat to keep the baby healthy. I have never had any problems with my iron levels etc but I have never been pregnant before. DH has upset me by suggesting I go against something which is obviously a huge part of my life but I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable to be upset or if hormones are making me think more of it? Thanks

You don't need to eat meat OP but you do need to keep an eye on your iron and B12 levels and get them regularly checked. If you're not taking supplements yet, start them now as the important development of the spinal cord etc. is happening right now, don't wait until your booking appointment. Remember that iron works best if taking with vitamin C so take with orange juice or similar, and don't take within an hour or two of drinking tea, coffee or cocoa.

I'm not vegetarian or vegan but I went right off meat in my last pregnancy, even the smell of it made me sick (even seeing it in the fridge made me sick so I wish I had had another fridge in the garage to banish it to!) and I was quite anaemic throughout despite supplements but baby was fine.

“So it's ok for vegans to breastfeed their babies but not for them to have milk from an animal source. What's that about ?”
This is a joke, right? Tell me that it’s a joke.....

see your doctors urgently & ask for B12 injections for you & your babies sake

Or buy a jar of marmite and put it on toast in the mornings.

@purpledaisy

As a lifelong vegan, I’m sure the op is aware of b12 deficiency

You would think so, but unfortunately my experience has been that isn't the case. Lots think seaweeds, spirulina etc are good sources of B12, I even have a good friend who is a naturopath who specialises in babies & pregnancy & advises some sort of algae based green drinks.

I also have a newer friend who is long time vegan & very militant with it. Along with physical signs, He also has serious MH problems that affect him badly & was picked up recently in his 60s as autistic too. All symptoms of deficiency (autism isn't of course, but it can share symptoms) He didn't have a clue he was harming himself with his diet, as he was sure he was eating a bit of B12 in his diet anyway. His health has much improved since he started on injections though.

& to which ever idiot said they wouldn't trust a site selling stuff. If you actually bothered to look, the link I posted does not sell anything 🙄

the link I posted does not sell anything

Actually it does and more to the point its selling scare stories. You plainly have a thing about B12 deficiency - I can understand that if you have had a bad personal experience. To translate that into a crisis message for the rest of the population and try to scare people into medical interventions without even checking levels first is ridiculous.

He's concerned and his concerns should be respected. If that means reassuring him by talking to medical professionals who are suitably qualified, or researching on the internet, then that is what the op should do. This may or may not lead to changes in her diet or supplements.

Neither are being unreasonable. Communication is the answer.

Why complain about he DH being controlling about her diet when her parents clearly controlled her diet up until now.

More importantly whose dietary regime is imposed on the child?

Ex DP made me eat meat before ttc. This week I left him because he was controlling and abusive. Don't do anything that you do not want to do.

@CH18

^see your doctors urgently & ask for B12 injections for you & your babies sake

Or buy a jar of marmite and put it on toast in the mornings.^

Unfortunately as I've learnt the hard way it isn't that simple. If you have a good store of B12 in your liver, you might be okay, but it's unlikely a longtime vegan who doesn't supplement will have a good enough B12 store to get them through pregnancy with top ups of marmite etc. B12 isn't easy to digest, so you don't benefit from all that you eat.

Anyway, I'm ducking out now. I've left information to help the OP with her DP & to avoid the problems we had. I'm not here to debate, unfortunately a ton of very shit life experiences leading to disability & death means I've had to learn this stuff the hard way. If posting helps one person avoid that, then job done. I'm not really interested in arguing the toss with a bunch of belligerent strangers 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have been vegetarian for 30+ years. Can go weeks on a vegan diet and could probably go vegan without too much thought.

Lots of friends told me I needed to feed Dd and ds meat otherwise they would be very short and I would have stunted their growth.

Taking into account I am quite short and Dp is 5ft 9”and these friends towered over me and Dp. Dd is taller than her father 6ft 2” in heels and ds is 6ft and hasn’t stopped growing. Friends children are both shorter than me.

Hinbu to suggest you need to think carefully about your diet. Of course a vegan diet can be healthy but it is harder and the idea of getting your iron levels regularly checked etc is good. Vegans are higher risk for deficiencies in pregnancy- which doesn't mean they should stop being vegan, but they do need to be aware and take extra care.
High to tell you to eat meat, but it sounds like it's coming from a good place. Do some research on pregnancy and organism, get your levels checked and reassure him.
Also, serious point upthread, if you can't breastfeed for whatever reason, soya formula isn't good for babies until 6 months so you may need to prepare to tolerate cow's milk formula if things control to plan.

So many autocorrect typos there, sorry!

CH18, there are tens of thousands of people in that one group who go through the same as we did. There are big issues with getting B12 deficiency diagnosed & treat, especially with the NHS. The tests are known to be unreliable & doctors too often don't know enough about the deficiency,they just don't get taught this stuff in med school.

You can believe what you like about the site, your closed mind is not my problem 🙄

You can believe what you like

I'd rather work on actual evidence, not the opinions of someone advising medical interventions without even a blood test.

I would ask for b12 levels to be added to a blood test if you start to feel run down, dizzy, or keep forgetting things. Although obviously that’s pretty much standard in pregnancy anyway. Another thing to consider is that some medications given in pregnancy for sickness block absorption of B12 so you are then using up what stores you have. (Studies say long term use of medications like omeprazol can cause a permenant problem but anything that reduces stomach acid can hinder B12 absorption as generally our bodies aren’t that good at absorbing it anyway) So I would say as a vegan it’s important to be aware of B12 issues as well as iron.

I’m a Vegetarian with B12 absorption issues after two pregnancies where I was on meds for sickness - not trying to sell anything! - what I said is googleable and stated on NHS sources. There are some loons out there about B12 who insist you start self injecting at the slightest symptom so I recommend thoroughly checking out any sources you read!

CH8 or whatever

Can you actually read, or do you just like making things up to post to try & annoy people🤷🏼‍♀️.

As before as you seem hard of understanding. The site links to reputable medical information, it literally just gathers all of that into one place for ease of use & the site owner has an OBE for her good work. Sales links are actually petitions & the likes

Why is it so important to you to nitpick my Information & experience without obviously having looked at it properly ?? You might want to have a think about that because it doesn't make you come across well

Goodbye

Lots of friends told me I needed to feed Dd and ds meat otherwise they would be very short and I would have stunted their growth

Yes I had all the same scare stories and pressure. The idea that "controlling" is keeping meat stored seperately is laughable compared to the emotional blackmail every man and their dog feels entitled to dish out when you don't conform to their personal food idealogy. I particularly enjoyed lectures on nutrition from parents feeding their toddlers on doughnuts and sausages.

Mine are all adults now, all disgustingly healthy adults, all well above average height.

For those saying its more difficult to eat healthily on a vegan or vegetarian diet - that may be true for people adapting to it as a new diet but if its your lifelong diet then its no more difficult than for any other pregnant woman considering her health and diet.

I refer you to your own scarepost upthread - no advice to check levels just to rush to the doctor for injections.

RockinHippy Sun 17-Mar-19 08:57:45

You might want to have a think about that because it doesn't make you come across well

I'm devastated.

I will echo what a PP said about the fridge thing. Ethical vegans don't believe it's right to use animals as a commodity when there's no need to. Most non-vegans wouldn't want to open the fridge and see a dead cat. We just don't discriminate between species in the way meat-eaters do.

I've just checked my cupboards and there are barely any items that don't contain added B12 - I'm getting way more as a vegan than I did when I only ate meat a couple of times a week and never drank cow's milk. Even my occasional can of Monster (diet, which is vegan but obviously not suitable for pregnancy) contains 100% of the RDA. B12 comes from the soil, and animals don't wash their food so they ingest it - that's then what we get if we eat it. If we didn't wash all our veg with chemicals we'd be getting it too.

The iodine meat eaters get comes not from the animals themselves but from the stuff the farmers use to clean milking equipment - like what is used during surgery. I take kelp to get iodine, just don't go over the RDA because it can cause toxicity in some people.

This site is a good, evidence-based source of info that links to a lot of studies and is very honest about the quality of sources of things vegans may become deficient in - veganhealth.org/vitamin-b12/

Gojiman on YouTube has a few science-based videos related to this too so check him out. His specialism is food and health and he's vegan.

Don't pregnant women in the UK take a daily prenatal vitamin? Which would almost certainly contain B12 and iron anyway?

Don't be ridiculous C8, of course a doctor is going to want to check levels before giving injections, so it's not rocket science to work out that's what I meant 🙄

though an enlightened doctor or which there thankfully are a few, would know it can only help & not harm the mother or baby, so might prefer not to waste time waiting for potentially unreliable test results & any further damage from a deficiency. Especially with miscarriage a potential symptom.

Just out of interest why do you need a vegan and a non vegan fridges? How would milk/cheese contaminate other things?

(I appreciate its none of my business and whatever works for you etc etc)

You make him keep milk in the garage because you won’t have it in the house?! What do you think a bottle of milk will do to your fridge?

It's ridiculous, isn't it? I wonder if the fruits and veggies are bought from the farmers who are also vegan.

Well we know it works for her. We don't know how her husband feels about it. And we never will

And we actually dont know if it works for her either. She just stated that’s what they do, no opinion given as to how that works for them.

So offering your own opinion about how you wouldn’t tolerate such a set-up is, as my old mum used to say, interesting but irrelevant.

Bear in mind that many HCPs are as ignorant about vegan diets as anyone else......

Exactly that and loads of other things!