Vegan baby - worried about allergies

[Milsta]

Hi there -

I’m currently just 12 weeks pregnant, but planning ahead for when our first baby arrives next year!

DH and I have been vegan for about 9 and a half years now and we both have always been sure about raising our future children vegan too (until they are old enough to choose otherwise, if they ever do).

I plan to breastfeed initially, however I have been learning more and more about weaning (for when the time comes) and we are super torn about this decision. So I wondered if any other vegan families had any thought/experiences when it comes to this..

I have read quite a bit of research on how, when weaning a baby, introducing common allergens frequently and at an early stage can reduce the risk of them developing these allergies. We had always thought we’d never give our baby animal products from birth, but we are now having doubts as to whether this is a responsible choice in terms of developing allergies.

Even as long-term vegans, mistakes occasionally happen. E.g. food at a party mislabelled as ‘vegan’ when it actually contains milk. Or travelling abroad to a country that doesn’t have the same understanding of veganism and unknowingly likely consuming some level of milk or egg within a dish.
For my husband and I, we have never had any medical issue with this sort of thing making us sick, as we had grown up eating milk/eggs. Obviously we’d be unhappy about it but it was never dangerous.

However, if our baby never eats milk/eggs/etc., they are at a higher chance of developing an allergy and we may not know to be careful with these allergens.
For example, if they have never consumed milk and then one day accidentally eat something at school, a friend’s birthday party, on holiday etc., we wouldn’t have allergy medication ready because we wouldn’t know they were allergic?

I know this is probably just me overthinking things, I really hope it all makes sense, I just feel so conflicted about this. I am really passionate about veganism and hope to instil positive compassionate values in our child.. but I also don’t want to be doing something to put them at risk.

I know it is completely our choice at the end of the day, but wanted to hear some thoughts that cover both sides of the dilemma so I can make an informed decision.

Anyone else been through this and have any stories to share?

Thanks so much!

In the nicest possible way, if you are going to be a Mum you need to toughen up a little if comments here upset you.

You are going to hear a lot more in real life.

You need to consider how you deal with it when your child is invited to parties etc. Believe me you are going to hear a pile more ignorant things and any people struggle to cope to cater for vegans (even though it really shouldn't be that hard).

It's a reality that you are going to have to deal with other kids with chocolate and sweets.

I have a son with an unusual allergy and that's hard enough.

Honestly, whilst I partly admire your conviction, also understanding this is something you will come across daily when you have a child is something you will have to get to grips with.

You can't live in a little pro-vegan bubble unfortunately.

One of the things I found really diffucot

was we had some vegan kids at our school and they could never come to the fairs or get involved as such. Never get prizes because they’re always nearly sweets!

at Partis they always struggled too because they’re couldn’t sit with the other kids. Couldn’t eat the same and just made me a little sad.

I absolutely would choose to add allergens early though. My first pregnancy I was told to ignore peanuts and my second I was told to eat loads of them

i do have a child with allergies but I would for sure add as much as I could the younger I could.

There was a case. But they also hated medical intervention which is ultimately what killed the child. Not the diet.

I’m not planning to live in a bubble. DH and I have faced plenty of people over the years who liked to try and pick apart every aspect of our lives due to us simply existing as vegans.
However, my point was that I posted in a vegan thread on mumsnet and therefore expected responses from people who are actually vegan mums. Can you blame me? But fear not, I have learned my lesson and understand that this thread is, in fact, not a place for vegans! Much to my surprise. 😅

@Milsta I work in infant feeding, I repeat there is no first stage infant formula in the UK that is vegan that meets UK formula regulations.

Take no notice of the above people. Mumsnet has a tendency to be very histrionic about particular topics including veganism.

both me and my husband are vegan but we’ve raised our child to be veggie partly because of allergies and partly because of making life a bit easier. Our child eats a lot of vegan food as well because that’s what we cook but we’ll often give her egg and cheese and foods that have milk in them.

I find the perks of a vegan diet are that we’re a bit more aware of what we are eating and are using loads of vegetables and different pulses and grains so it’s a good diet and frankly a lot better than some of the other kids I see. I also breastfed with no issues and just took the usual pregnancy supplements.

To flip what other people are saying, I personally don’t think it’s right to raise my children to eat meat but obviously when they’re older they can make their own choices 🤷🏼‍♀️

Good luck!

I think people need reminding that OP posted on the vegan board, not AIBU. It’s a fairly quiet board that offers great help and advice from other vegans….when not invaded by non vegans that is. OP was looking for advice from those who were vegan and had faced this.

The only advice here is to seek professional advice from a dietician. Anything else is unhelpful.

Veganism in general, even for adults, is really triggering for some people, they should possibly question why that is. They won’t though, they’ll just keep saying stupid things. It’s like the slightly more grown up version of of just posting burger emojis like immature people on other SM do. 🙄

You are adults. This is a woman seeking help about her baby. Try to remember that.

Good thing her baby probably won’t be a dog then!

I had begun to research some that can be imported from overseas, which is what I was referring to, but I may have been mistaken! 😊 I paused research on that as we reached the point of deciding to likely introduce milk, which means I would be able to use dairy-based formula as a backup if breastfeeding doesn’t work out. We have contacts for lactation specialists so hoping it won’t be an issue as I would love to breastfeed as plan A anyway.
Thank you though!

Please do see a dietician OP. We had really great advice. Kids are now teens and adults, all vegan and healthy.

There is a thread at the moment talking about the shit hole mumsnet has become. This is a good example of that.

The thing to understand about Mumsnet, OP, is that a lot of people will not look at the topic headings - they will just look at "active threads" and click on any thread title that looks interesting. Some people may even choose a particular thread because they fancy starting a bunfight. Unfortunately, this means that you can't just post in the vegan section and expect to only get responses from vegan posters.

The other thing to prepare yourself for is the fact that, whatever you do as a mum, there will be people queuing up to tell you that you're doing it wrong. Learn to ignore them and follow your own instincts and research.

There are some brilliant people on these boards and there is a lot of excellent advice. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of nonsense as well.

It's not as simple as that though.

It's not picking you apart for being a vegan either.

You are coming from a place of assuming anything not positive is a full on attack.

Chill. Don't assume that everyone is somehow 'out to get you'.

They aren't. Understand everything gets more complex and difficult when kids are involved - whatever lifestyle you choose!

Honestly the first few years are hard enough. My son wouldn't eat ANYTHING when all the books said and other people started weaning. It's shit. Being vegan is inevitably adding an additional layer of complication to this, regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

You need to be open to criticism on this, for good reasons at times because it is a big deal and no it's not about you. Some of these WILL come from the likes of HV and medical professionals.

If you are armed with knowledge and how to respond to more negative as well as positive comments and understand when it's not a hill to die on you'll ultimately be in a much better position to support what you want to do.

As a different angle, I have a child with a milk allergy. Not a vegan household, but milk made me spew most of the way through pregnancy so they would have had very little exposure pre birth. I then had to exclude from my diet to continue breastfeeding. I’ve had issues with milk in any quantity since then.

So off that experience, the allergy early exposure thing is real. There’s also proper science that backs it up.

If you do breastfeed from a vegan diet, watch your calcium & iron and child’s when comes to weaning. Breastfeeding hammers calcium and it was really tough to keep levels up high enough dairy free. BDA had good info sheets.

Sprout organic formula is vegan. It’s quite expensive but can be shipped here and i think there are plans for a uk warehouse so it’ll be easier to get soon

Human breast milk is vegan, due to the non exploitation of animals. However a baby shouldn’t be forced a vegan diet

This is a very wise post @Milsta so I am just reposting to emphasise it.

What I would add is : there is no such thing as ethical purity. Whatever your stance on any ethical issue there is a line beyond which you are willing to compromise. In issues which could affect your baby's health, wellbeing or even their life, it is ok. You know already that some vaccines and many many medications do not meet the strictest standards of vegan ethics yet I hope you wouldn't risk your child's life by denying them those medications and vaccines. So if the professional advice you receive from an appropriately qualified person (not just from random strangers on mumsnet) is in the direction of giving your child some animal products to benefit their long term health and wellbeing then this is ok and is not a failure but a sensible balancing of your priorities.

I'm coming at this from a slightly different angle. I had always intended to wean DD onto healthy food (we're not vegan). However it turned out that she found weaning very difficult (we ended up under a dietitian), and still eats a very restricted diet. A vegan diet can be complete and healthy, but if DD only ate the vegan parts of her diet, she'd be seriously malnourished. It might be worth thinking through what you'd do if your child couldn't cope with any wet food for example (so absolutely no sauces), or only tolerates one vegetable (DD eats a lot of broccoli...).

Hi, we are also vegan and have a toddler now. I had great intentions of raising a vegan baby, but couldn’t manage it (want to say here we didn’t but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible). Sadly breastfeeding, which I took for granted that I would do, did not work out and ended up using formula which as others have said is not vegan.

When it came to weaning, I also wanted to ensure they had exposure to allergies and I guess it was less difficult to decide as they were already on dairy with formula - it didn’t feel as huge a step. I also haven’t asked for a vegan or even vegetarian diet at nursery because I think it would be a load of Quorn rather than lentils, beans etc.

It’s a tough one, I think with time we will transition to more vegan at home (main home cooked meals are anyway, as me and DH are still eating vegan) and I’ve had to make peace with how we have done it.

I question how much professional advice you will get on what is really a niche issue unfortunately. It's something of an unrealistic expectation.

When I think about the problems I had with HV when DS was small it's actually dreadful. We got a lot of very poor and inaccurate advice.

You really almost had to arm yourself with knowledge and argue the case for anything that didn't tick their boxes.

Its alienating and I think it does put babies at risk - this isn't just a vegan issue either.

It's about being able to find your own credible and accurate information which isn't full on activist (again this isn't a vegan criticism - you come across it with all matters of infant feeding topics).

In the midst of sleep deprivation it feels a million times worse too.

Thing is, you also got non-confrontational information from omnivore posters. Allergies are a concern for all parents, not just the ones who share your ethical beliefs, and if you believe that it's an intrinsic omni=bad faith, that can lead you to potentially rejecting sound advice.

Make sure you include sources of soy in your diet whilst BFing as well - that's definitely an allergy you want to avoid in view of the food groups you'd prefer not to have, as soy is a significant constituent of many plant based foods - and considering how difficult it can be to source products with brexit, various shortages, strikes and just marketing decisions on the part of stockists (I could not get soy formula for love nor money at one point and she needed it medically, for example), it could be risky to rely upon either a specific import or even the standard D2 supplemented formula.

This is also worth noting with breast feeding. My twins were/are dairy intolerant so I excluded dairy from my diet whilst breast feeding. And the twins dietician had me take high dose calcium due to not having dairy in my diet whilst producing milk to breast feed. This was both to supplement me and my milk supply.

Additionally due to a lack of dairy in their diets they had toddler diarrhoea. This is due to during weaning and toddler years they need a lot of healthy fats in their diets (more than adults). You can substitute this with nuts/avacados for example. But you need to be aware that a baby/toddlers demands for fats is much higher than in adults. This is just to make you aware if not already so you can make sure you adjust baby/toddler diet accordingly. As I have had a lot of input with dieticians over the twins life to make these adjustments. Although toddlers often go through fuzzy times at some point or other, so not always easy - my dietician is forever telling me to give them avacados and peanut butter - neither of which either of them will eat.

You will also be amazed at people's unawareness of what's in food when it comes to children. Even with people who have been advised they cant have dairy so many times are my girls offered 'treats' by family/friends/strangers etc. Most playgroups I have attended do not cater for them. This just means I tend to have a supply of suitable treats/snacks on me at all times to substitute.

Sausage 🤪

Sausage 🤪

mini Party rings, jammy dodgers and soreen bars to the rescue…..