Baby in a vegan household

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I know I’m mad to be thinking about this since this baby isn’t even born yet, but it’s playing on my mind!

I’m vegan, my husband isn’t but he eats vegan at home since it’s easier than buying and cooking separate food. Our household is therefore totally vegan.

I know it’s perfectly possible to raise a healthy child on a vegan diet, but I don’t expect I will raise my baby as strictly vegan - I don’t want them to have to be restrictive about food until they’re old enough to understand why. So I have been working on the assumption that they will be vegan at home, but try animal products when with their grandparents etc.

My worry is, is this setting them up for food intolerances? If they never eat cheese / milk / eggs etc at home, is it going to make them sick to have those things when they try them now and then?

Is this a totally mad and unfounded worry?

Following as I'm in a similar situation (veggie but trying to cut back on dairy and dp is omnivore but lactose intolerant). I had been thinking that it would be good to at least try DC with milk/cheese at a young age to reduce risk of intolerances (esp given that it might be genetic for them) but with no scientific basis for this at all! Interested to hear others views..

Thank you for the reply! I worry about intolerances too. I’m lactose intolerant but it didn’t come on until later in life, so I worry the baby could be too. I feel like it would be so much harder for them to avoid milk as a child (birthday parties / school lunches etc) than it is for me as an adult, so I don’t want to set them up with an intolerance!

When I was weaning I read about the Leap study (from memory) by Kings College London which found early introduction of allergens reduced allergies.

So I aimed to give all allergens quite early. Peanut I think is important to give regularly. However I don’t know with dairy how many times is ‘enough’. It might be that only a few exposures is enough, or at regular (but long) intervals?

So the grandparents plan sounds reasonable, maybe just nudge them to give dairy if they don’t mind fairly regularly?

Hopefully there are some good vegan forums you can access, or you could even pay for advice from an allergy specialist when the time comes.

Slightly different, but we have restrictions at home as I have a severe intolerance to gluten (just crumbs will make me ill.) There are no gluten containing products in our home.

We got round this by

1. DS eating gluten-y food whenever out for a meal (DH on clear up duty.)
2. DS eating gluten-y food whenever at grandparents house.
3. DS eating gluten-y food several times during every nursery session.

We started it as soon as we started weaning, as we didn't want to run into any issues.
Turns out he has a life threatening egg allergy instead 🤦🏼‍♀️ but seems fine with gluten so far. It's great that you're planning ahead.

Are you going to breast feed your baby?

I recall recently there was a case where a baby of vegan parents was incredibly ill and they were charged with neglect, so it is important for the baby to be breastfed.

I am vegetarian, DH is vegan. Kids are not either as they can make their own lifestyle choices later in their life.

I'm with glitter - children should
Make their own decisions later in life. I'd feed some reliably sourced meat and fish personally, but teach them about vegan diets and how to eat correctly, eat correct combinations and learn about the problems the diet can cause if it's not done with mindfulness of how and what to eat to achieve the levels of vitamins,
Minerals and essential amino acids etc

@glitterfarts if I’m thinking of the same story the issue was that the parents were only feeding their baby raw fruit. They had an older child as well who was severely malnourished, I think. That was a very sad case where the parents were completely ignorant and the children suffered badly. But I don’t think it’s remotely representative - the overwhelming majority of vegans have healthy, well-cared for babies, just like any parents!

I am planning to breastfeed, assuming I can (I know it doesn’t always work out), but even if I can’t I would be very careful to ensure the baby has a suitable and nutritionally complete diet.

Thank you so much everyone for the input, especially those dealing with other food allergies and restrictions - it’s very helpful to hear how you manage it!

Have a look at the EAT study. The general rule is major allergens should be given early as possible, when weaning and regularly. Human milk is 4 times higher in lactose than cows milk so while breast feeding lactose shouldn’t be an issue.

I don’t believe the U.K. has a vegan formula. You can buy a soya formula but it’s not vegan and is only suitable for babies from 6 months.

Join us on the vegan board www.mumsnet.com/Talk/vegan

"I am planning to breastfeed, assuming I can (I know it doesn’t always work out), but even if I can’t I would be very careful to ensure the baby has a suitable and nutritionally complete diet."

This is going to be an issue if you can't breastfeed because I think you'd have to give cow's milk formula, there aren't really any suitable vegan alternatives - Wysoy maybe??

So my advice is to look up all your local breastfeeding support options - helplines, groups, breastfeeding counsellors, lactation consultants.

When you start weaning it would be easy to introduce a few non-vegan foods. But there's no need to force it either. My DS had CMPA so he was dairy free, and he wasn't particularly interested in egg, fish or meat for ages, so he was accidentally vegan for a while (although is obsessed with sausages now!) You can still offer a varied diet, whether they'll eat it is another thing

Thank you so much everyone, I really appreciate your input ☺️

"I’m lactose intolerant but it didn’t come on until later in life, so I worry the baby could be too."

It is very rare indeed for a baby to be lactose intolerant, since all babies drink milk, and there is lactose in milk, it would be a bit of an evolutionary flaw

If babies have milk allergies the problem is with cow's milk protein, not lactose.

I would try to make sure you introduce all allergens once you start weaning. My twins are allergic to dairy (CMPA) - once they hit six months we tried them on Wysoy (we were told not to give it before six months but I was still mainly pumping at that point) and DT1 had a very severe reaction. I gave them most things in the early days including egg but they didn’t like it so didn’t give it again for quite some time and DT2 had an immediate severe reaction. I’m anaphylactic to nuts and sesame - DT1 has had mild reactions to sesame so that’s out for now, and they don’t get nuts as often as I’d like because of my allergies.

Having multiple allergies is an absolutely huge pain in the arse. If you can help to prevent them by early exposure then it’s definitely worthwhile. We’ve now managed to reintroduce soy (although only in small quantities) and egg if it’s baked in something eg cake, but lightly cooked egg, dairy and sesame are still out, plus the nuts for me. It’s a proper ballache.