Newborn baby vegan

[starflake]

I'm due in December and I'm contemplating raising Baba as vegan. I'm vegetarian years & only eat a minimal amount of dairy, if Baba is vegan I'll go down the vegan route also. I'm contemplating this as I know the benefits of not consuming dairy or meat but I've never raised a baby vegan! My other DC are meat eaters bar one who is veggie like me. I'm looking for advice on formulas & how difficult it will be weaning etc. I'm planning on breastfeeding with some combi feeding so maybe one or two formula feeds a day after supply comes in. I'm not posting this in pregnancy section as I'm not up for a bashing on how harmful this will be for baba. TIA

The only person I know raising their baby vegan is staunchly vegan herself and moved hell and high water to exclusively breastfeed until 6 months.

If you are not vegan yourself, and your other kids eat meat, then why on earth are you planning on raising this baby vegan? They are not a toy for experimenting on you know.

I have a child who was vegan from conception until around 10 months - (then her elder sibling wanted to share veggie food and I didn't want to complicate it so now she's mostly vegan but technically veggie). I breastfed till 2.5 years as I felt happier that if I was eating well she would be too. She seems perfectly healthy, eats lots of great food was very ahead with language so in my limited experience I think a carefully planned vegan diet is great.

I agree with others - I think you need to plan to EBF if you want your baby to avoid dairy. All animals drink milk as babies - if you don't want your baby to drink another animal's milk then you need to give them yours.
From weaning I guess the challenge is ensuring sufficient protein. FWIW I am a vegetarian and would like to be vegan so I'm not dismissing your choice. I just am not sure planning to use non dairy milk in the first year is a great one.

@Morgan12 what if the baby grows up and doesn’t want to have eaten animals?

As parents the choice of eating or not eating meat/ dairy falls to us. Both are equally valid choices. (Not trying to be an arse here)

@ginunicorn Exactly- great point. We are always making a choice on their behalf either way.

I wish my parents hadn't fed me meat and dairy- would have saved a lot of years of suffering from sinusitis amongst other things.

Didn’t a baby, being brought up as Vegan, nearly starve to death? In Sweden I think.

If the OP was actually being serious she’d already know that combination feeding wasn’t a possibility. I think she’s trying to wind us up.

I think this is a question you should be asking a medical professional.

I think that was a very peculiar case that got a lot of attention because of the vegan fact but there were other issues there.

I think the funny thing is plenty of kids are literally bought up on junk food (I know a man in his mid 20's who doesn't eat any fruit or vegetables!) and no one blinks an eyelid. As soon as you mention 'vegan' people start worrying.

Yaf the baby died of neglect and malnutrition, there was a lot of things going on with the family. The media picked up on the word vegan and ran with it. They basically starved the baby to death.

But that's probably due to the mass marketing (some would say brainwashing) by the massive meat and dairy industries who even influence government food recommendations.

More and more evidence is coming to light about the benefits of a plant based diet. These big industries want our money! If you look beyond what they are telling us in advertising you find out some interesting things. We don't need meat and certainly don't need the breastmilk of a different species in adulthood.

But if you're breastfeeding, your baby wouldn't be a vegan, as he/she would be drinking milk 😂 😂 😂 😂.

But if you're breastfeeding, your baby wouldn't be a vegan, as he/she would be drinking milk 😂 😂 😂 😂.

The definition of a vegan is someone who doesn't consume animal products. Breast milk isn't an animal product.

Who would like to explain biology to
@CodenameVillanelle

And carrots scream .... Yeah yeah Annonni vegetarians and vegans have heard it all before from every boring twat at every dinner party ever. lol literally dies crying off lafter

Still think this is a jolly jape thread though.

Who would like to explain biology to
@CodenameVillanelle hmm

Oh for goodness sake. Vegans don't consume the products of ANIMALS for ethical reasons. We don't exploit other creatures for food or anything else. A human woman is not an animal and the baby is not exploiting the mother by feeding from her. Human milk is designed for human babies and freely given. Cow milk is designed for cow babies and is stolen from the cows and forcibly extracted to sell to humans.

Veganism is rejecting the exploitation of animals (non-human) for human gain.

Vegans also tend to be pretty big on not exploiting humans either.

There's no need to start mocking vegans on the Vegan Board.

You can’t feed formula and have a vegan baby. You just can’t. If you want to go down this path, you must commit to breastfeeding exclusively. I would plan on not stopping breastfeeding until very late. Bare minimum of 2 years and really your target should be the estimated natural full weaning age with if I recall correctly is 4-5 years.

Ahem. Humans are animals...

I’m vegan ,as are my kids
Seems odd to me that your not vegan yourself
Try being vegan first ,before you make baby vegan ,it is harder work making sure they have their nutritional needs met.

Why don't you let the child decide when it's old enough whether it wants to be vegan. Ffs.

Oh for fucks sake. Human breastmilk is vegan, for fucking obvious reasons, can we put that one to bed now?

OP, if you are serious about wanting to have a baby vegan (and why?), the only viable option, morally and practically, is to exclusively breastfeed for at least a year. Can't or won't do that, no vegan baby.