Vegan Birth Stories

Please read our collection of birth stories. If you'd like to submit your own, please submit your story here. Vegan or vegetarian birth stories are welcome.

Elijah

Just the other day at thanksgiving as I politely turned down a piece of caramel apple cheesecake from my brother's future mother in law, I had to once again explain to someone that you don't have to drink milk to make milk. She was horrified. She just kept saying, "But aren't you nursing??" It was pointless. I quickly diverted the conversation. All she had to do was look over at my big bouncing baby boy Elijah and know I was right but she was stuck in archaic thinking.

He's been vegan his whole life except for the nurse who tried to give him formula even after I told every single person in the hospital that if I had a c-section not to give him formula and if they had to, to use soy. I was mortified. But what's past is past. He's been latched on ever since and doing fine.

I was scheduled for Sept. 15th at six thirty in the morning to be induced after watching his due date come and go and knowing that the time my husband had off work was running short and if we waited any longer he wouldn't be able to attend the birth. That and my doctor would be away at a baseball tournament. So inducing in order to have the two most important people there made sense. But I guess my little man didn't like the idea of pitocin any more than I did so I ended up checking in right when I was scheduled but I'd been in early labor all weekend.

Now that was a long day. I went in thinking I would gracefully deny all pain medication. I did pretty well, I got many comments on how stoic I was and how calmly I breathed through the contractions. People would laugh because I kept asking everyone else how they were doing, my mother in law, my best friend. By the afternoon I conceded to some pain medication but still no epidural. But that night after two and a half hours of intense pushing I faced the inevitable. I knew in my heart I'd have a huge headed baby and end up with a c-section no matter how much I feared it. I'd been in back labor and my back would spasm with each push and I couldn't handle another second.

The surgical team was comprised of five or six women all under five four, and I'm six foot two. It must have been comical watching them handle me and lift me because at that point I couldn't do it myself. At this point "calm and stoic" could no longer be applied. "Hysterical and exhausted" was more like it. But when I heard my husband yell "he's got so much hair! he's huge!" I knew I'd pull through. My nine pound nine ounce baby boy. He was twenty two inches long. The picture of health, he scored a perfect ten on his apgar, even though he was a cesarean baby. So a big thumb on the nose to all the skeptics who told me I needed to eat meat or at least drink milk because I needed calcium and protein and blah blah blah.

Now he's two and a half months old and has been wearing his 3-6 month clothes for quite a while. He's over twenty five inches long and weighs over 16lbs. No one can believe he's his age, they all guess four months. He's huge and perfect and I did it all with out caramel apple cheese cake thank you very much! Heheheh...

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