Lina: Planning a Vegan Pregnancy

[Soldevi]

It isn't just a pregnancy, I hope she will educate herself a lot about vegan diet on children. They will need lots and lots of calories and fats and such to grow up healthy. I am not saying that vegan diet should be banned. Not at all. But it requires more information than regular diet and much much more when it comes to diet of developing children.

I know vegan parents whose children have developed normally but I also see cases in news where vegan children have been malnourished, even died. Just because parents have thought they know what they are doing.

I have been vegetarian more than half of my life and when I began, it was hard here. In most restauratns their only vegetarian dish was a side salad. Even chefs thought that being vegetarian meant that you can eat "white meat" so my food often included pork or fish. Vegetarianism was seen as an act, not something a normal person would do so I had to educate myself. It is so much easier today, back then the Internet was something we were dreaming.

Nowadays I eat wild game when it is offered to me and I often choose a vegan recipe but I don't want to be a vegan. I am fine with my 95% vegetarian diet. I do use whey protein because I am exercising hard and I believe Lina and TT's muscle development could benefit from extra protein like soy protein if they go to gym more than once a week.

[Sola]

Something I noticed on Lina's blog...

On Jan 15, she said she was 15 weeks pregnant. So according to the timeline she's been presenting, she would have been about 16.5 weeks along on Jan 25. In her post from Jan 25, she says, "yesterday and today, I felt lots of little kicks." That was the first time, but since then she's mentioned frequent kicking in a few of her posts.

I've never been pregnant, but I've been hooked by the Lina pregnancy gossip... so out of curiosity I looked up fetal movement. According to webmd:

(http://www.webmd.com/baby/fetal-movemen ... -baby-kick)

The kicking Lina has been feeling is certainly in the realm of possibility, but it seems pretty strong, pretty early... which shores up predictions others have made for a large premie! ;)

With both my pregnancies I felt fluttering at 13 weeks. With my first I was as skinny as a skinny thing before I got pregnant (ah the days of having a figure) and showed really early (at 11 weeks my jeans were too tight) so I put it down to largish fetus, small tum. By 16 weeks in both pregnancies I could feel, and see the kicks so it isn't too surprising she can feel them.

[alysee]

I thought I was weird. I am a vegan at home. At restaurants, or peoples house's I eat meat but at home it's a vegan diet. It started in college because I was broke( and malnourished) but since being out of school I've improved my vegan diet. I went vegan because of a friend in high school. She was completely vegan. She has now had 3 strong adorable vegan kids. It can be done but there needs to be real current info learned.

[Deleted03]

Honestly, I'm vegetarian what would probably amount to 95% of the time if not more. But although I do occasionally eat meat, I always identify myself to other people as vegetarian, because since I am both picky and keep kosher, the chance that somebody who are not my parents producing meat that I would actually eat is nil. Since I'm not vegetarian for ethical reasons (although I do think that there are important environmental reasons to eat far less meat than the average Americans) I don't get self-righteous about being vegetarian, but I do tell people even when it's not 100% the truth, because for all intents and purposes, if you are making me a meal or trying to eat a meal with me, I do not eat meat. If that makes any sense.

Yeah me too. And in France I eat meat too because it's just a nightmare to 1- find enough vegetarian options 2- to make m family understand about it.

But here I always Identify as vegetarians, because most probably the meat is not organic/sustainably raised. I buy meat maybe once a month, I usually take two months to finish it. I use organic chicken broth at home. I personally think you use the identity you want, and it's not because there was a vegan police in Scott Pilgrim, that there is one in real life.

[Deleted03]

I think too that the overemphasis on her being so healthy with eating vegan is annoying. How about all those moms who only eat fast food all along their pregnancy? what about the hormones in beef and their way through the foetus, how about those who eat like two when you don't need that much calories? Are they more healthy than someone looking closely at the amount of protein she eats?

Wolfie she takes prenatal supplements, so here is your calcium. Plus soy milk is always boosted with calcium and vit D...

[jenny_islander]

@Sophie: It isn't the vegan thing for a lot of people posting here, I think. It's the fact that Lina, the very model of a modern silly dilettante, says she's going to stick to a diet that must be carefully researched, planned, and followed, in the midst of a pregnancy, while already there are signs that she may change hobbyhorses again (to raw-foodism) before the baby is even born, plus there are red flags that suggest that she is masking an eating disorder. It was all funny(ish) until the health of someone who didn't get to say, "No, I don't want to play" became involved.

If Lina does veganism as accurately as she did Judaism, and especially if she's attracted to veganism because of the long list of things vegans do not eat (control issues/eating disorder), there are medical issues ahead.

[Spider Burps]

Wolfie she takes prenatal supplements, so here is your calcium. Plus soy milk is always boosted with calcium and vit D...

One of doctors told me that the calcium in supplements, even when taken with food, is hard to absorb for many people. She told me that the chewy calciums (I'm pretty sure those aren't vegan...) are the only things she recommends for individuals who don't get enough calcium from their diets AND that you need to take those on top of whatever multivitamin (with calcium) you're taking. Also, your body can only absorb so much calcium at once, so you need to take it 2-3 times a day instead of just once with the multi which is why the extra calcium supplements are so essential. That is what she was recommending -I- do and I'm not pregnant; I can only imagine how much calcium a pregnant woman would need--especially one as slightly built as Lina.

[ilovetchotchkes]

@Sophie: It isn't the vegan thing for a lot of people posting here, I think. It's the fact that Lina, the very model of a modern silly dilettante, says she's going to stick to a diet that must be carefully researched, planned, and followed, in the midst of a pregnancy, while already there are signs that she may change hobbyhorses again (to raw-foodism) before the baby is even born, plus there are red flags that suggest that she is masking an eating disorder. It was all funny(ish) until the health of someone who didn't get to say, "No, I don't want to play" became involved.

If Lina does veganism as accurately as she did Judaism, and especially if she's attracted to veganism because of the long list of things vegans do not eat (control issues/eating disorder), there are medical issues ahead.

THIS.

I have disordered thinking about food. Not an eating disorder but at some times in my life was DAMN near developing one and the control over the food. OMG yes. The concept of Kosher as a Jew appeals to me because I'd have control over my food. I purposely only keep Kosher style so that it does not get out of hand.

[Deleted03]

THIS.

I have disordered thinking about food. Not an eating disorder but at some times in my life was DAMN near developing one and the control over the food. OMG yes. The concept of Kosher as a Jew appeals to me because I'd have control over my food. I purposely only keep Kosher style so that it does not get out of hand.

I know a couple of people who became vegetarian/vegan partially for the same reason. One of them expressely told me about her anorexia, and how being vegetarian and trying ot be vegan at home helps her control her food issues. She was eating normal amount of food/calories and veggies/carbs.

I just feel that most of the issues are with her veganism rather than her food, her menus as she puts them now seem pretty ok, if anything she's eating a lot of carbs, but that's a problem with many vegetarian and vegans.