Vegan Pregnancy & A Vegan Baby

Since my infertile years, people have questioned me about my diet and the likelihood that it was the reason for my inability to conceive.  "Do you think that your health problems come from being vegan?  Maybe you're not getting enough nutrients!" they'd say.  Of course I never even once believed that could be true.  PCOS and Endometriosis are among, if not the top reasons for infertility among women in the US.  That simple fact completely eliminates the idea that my vegan diet is at fault because veganism is not that common.  Not everyone with those health conditions are vegan.  I'll agree that maybe it has to do with diet, because most health conditions do, but not specifically a vegan one, just an unbalanced one.  

Even my doctors questioned my vegan diet, and that was always funny because since when do doctors care what you eat?  The form of nutrition training they have up their sleeves is the same kind of BS everyone else is fed from infancy in this country.  By no means is it from any higher education training--especially not medical school.  Not that I'm trying to discount medical professionals (not only have I relied on them for years regarding my infertility, I've been one) but Medical Doctors (MDs) are trained primarily in medicines and their treatment on disease, not diet and nutrition, of which I strongly believe is the cure to most every health condition and disease there is.  I know you don't believe me, but don't be too quick to judge.  I certainly wasn't.  It took years of reading and learning for me to come to this realization.  I don't expect others to accept it overnight.

Anyway, it bothered me to no end that people couldn't quit blaming my lifestyle choice as the reason for my infertility.  I knew there were hundreds if not thousands of other vegan couples who had successfully had children, but none of which I knew personally, so I couldn't prove it to anyone except to tell them to do their research.  I wanted them to know that quite honestly, my vegan diet was actually a step in the right direction rather than a cause of my infertility!  You see, I had been trying to get pregnant for 8 long years.  I hadn't been a vegan that whole time.  I was a vegetarian since birth, but vegetarians only choose not to eat animals.  Most vegetarians, while not eating meat, rely heavily on animal products such as dairy & eggs which in my understanding do the same thing to your body as animal flesh.  It's merely a by-product.  So, for over 25 years, I had been filling my body with animal products and slowly developing hormone imbalance health conditions which I believe strongly were caused directly by the animal protein. 

Now, I'm no good at lectures.  I don't like to make people feel uncomfortable or inferior or anything.  I have been made to feel that way in the past, and I know it only makes you feel defensive.  I just want people to understand that being vegan shouldn't be viewed as such an extreme freakish lifestyle.  Vegans are thoughtful and compassionate human beings.  The world through vegan eyes is horribly misguided.  It actually makes me angry to feel that we are all brainwashed from infancy to believe that animal products are good for us and will make us strong and healthy.  Not only that but if we don't get animal products in our body, we'll suffer!  I feel deceived by our country.  They should know better!  There has been so much research by scientists and doctors who dedicate their lives to making a difference and a breakthrough on diet vs. disease and their findings are literally dismissed.  I know it's unbelievable, but it's happening, and it has been happening for decades.  Why?  It's simple:  disease = money.  The head honchos don't want to say that simply eating differently will cure you of your cancer/heart disease/high blood pressure/diabetes, etc.  They won't make any money!  So they simply say more research needs to be done because it can't possibly be that easy.  Did you know that it's the dairy industry that pushes it's phony catch phrases onto the public and our children via elementary schools?  They develop entire lessons for teachers on how important it is to have dairy products for calcium.  They are not nutritionists, they are advertisers!  Just like any other company, they are pushing their product!  And the meat and dairy industries are so good at it because they're wealthy.  They've been doing it for so many years, it's just accepted as common sense.  Everyone now believes that a human being cannot live without dairy products.  Meat industries are less effective in their push for the needs of animal protein than the dairy industry is with pushing the need for cows milk.  Got Milk?  People are actually downright scared when they hear you don't consume any milk!

C A L M  D O W N !!!  Take a deep breath.  Easy.  That's it.  Here's my question to you:  If you believe that humans can't live without animal products, consider this thought.  Since it's been scientifically proven that cows produce superior amounts of calcium in their milk, and the cows themselves are packed with complete protein, given the fact that cows are in fact vegan creatures--think about it now--where do you think the cow gets those vital nutrients???  PLANTS!  Humans were not designed to suck cows milk out from under a cows utter.  Not even cows drink cows milk once they're weaned from their mothers.  Would you still like to suckle from your mother's breast?  More importantly, do you think you need to?  Of course not.  Besides, that would be torture on your mother's body if she had to continue lactating her entire life!  Yet in order to produce enough milk for the entire human population in America, that's exactly what we're doing to the cows.  In order to make them lactate, they have to become pregnant, then in order to use her milk production for human consumption, they have to take her baby away and stimulate the mother with painful amounts of hormones to up her milk production to abnormal proportions (more milk = more money per cow).  So what happens to her baby?  Depending on it's gender and their need, it's sold to another company tortured and then killed for the horrifying production of Veal.  This is a money making business, after all.  

The entire business of raising animals for the production of food is a terrifying one.  It's one that has gone so far out of control with cruelty and exploitation, to the point of threatening the destruction of Earth that it's beyond anyone's comprehension.  We are fishing the oceans dry and farming the earth to death, plowing down natural habitats for wild animals, forests and plants that most people don't even realize the immense importance of.  And it's all for the production of animal products for human consumption. 

(By the way, if you're having a hard time recognizing the importance of animals and the balance of every life on earth, I highly recommend watching David Attenborough's The Life Series & The Blue Planet by BBC.  Awesome and inspiring views of almost every living thing there is and their connection to the creation and maintaining of every life on earth.  Mike & I love watching them)!

Anyway, truth is, our fresh water supply is being used faster than it can be produced because of these excess animal farms and the amount of water it takes to stay in business.  Run off from animal farms pour into neighboring vegetable farms, contaminating the produce and causing uprisings of disease to spread throughout the innocent harvests.  Then people freak out and point fingers at vegetables for making them sick, like the big spinach scare a few years back.  Where do diseases like E coli come from?  Escherichia coli (E. coli) are members of a large group of bacterial germs that inhabit the intestinal tract of humans and other warm-blooded animals.  Consumption of any food or beverage that becomes contaminated by animal (especially cattle) manure can result in contracting the disease.  General population is being sheltered from the truth.  Most people have no idea what this kind of animal production is doing to their world.  If this is true, why isn't it more widely accepted as such, you wonder?  Governments and corporations don't want to cause panic and tend to dismiss those who try to stand up and make a difference.  

A few awesome, life changing books that highlight this problem in the country are The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Diet for a New America & The Food Revolution both by John Robbins.  There are many more sources of reference on this subject, but these are among my favorites, since they were the first books I'd read detailing this particular subject.  Another excellent source comes in video form called A Diet for All Reasons by Dr. Michael Klaper.

So, it's not just animal cruelty and exploitation that made me decide to become vegan.  For some reason, that just wasn't enough to make me change my habits.  Humans, as you probably know, are creatures of habit and no one wants to be made to feel like a fool.  That is something you must overcome when making a change of a lifetime like this.  You have to understand that it is no fault of your own that the world influenced you the way it did.  We were all taught from childhood that this was the way of the world and you don't question facts.  People become angry at vegans who try to explain why they have chosen this diet because they suddenly feel as though they are looked upon as a careless ass, like they don't care about the environment, their health or the way animals are treated.  And the truth is, they don't want to believe they're wrong, because they don't want to change.  

I became vegan because I finally learned that the consumption of animal products is detrimental to human health.  And not just that it's bad for you, but it's lethal.  Alzheimer's, Arthritis, Osteoporosis, Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Cancer; none of these are caused simply by old age.  They are caused by disease.  You can argue as long as you want about that, but you can't argue the fact that all of the above conditions are caused by nutritional imbalances and cholesterol.  It's scientific fact, right?  High cholesterol is a huge problem.  Cholesterol in the arteries causes high blood pressure and blockages.  Cholesterol in the brain causes a gradual plaque build up eventually leading to memory loss and eventually death.  And cholesterol, my friends, is only found in animal products.  Bones are sucked dry of their calcium when you eat too much animal products, the complete opposite of what you are taught to believe about it, and this almost always leads to debilitating conditions like arthritis and osteoporosis.  Again, I'm not a scientist, so I can't go into detail about why or how this happens, I just learned that it does and when you think about it long enough, it begins to make perfect sense.  Especially when you learn that once people give up their animal products, they begin to heal and eventually even cure their once life threatening diseases.  

I am vegan because I care about the health of this planet and everyone on it.  It makes me feel connected to every living thing in the natural circle of life and I love that.  There are many factors in the cause of infertility, I know that more than most people, I think!  But I didn't have it easy.  I didn't have blocked fallopian tubes or poor quality eggs, nor did my husband shoot blanks.  What I had was dubbed "unexplained infertility" by my doctors.  I had a hormone imbalance.  But there were several other factors.  Stress is one of those huge factors, and once you have complete balance in your life and let yourself trust in nature (more easily explained as not stressing out over everything and just letting it be), you will find yourself.  Infertility causes inner panic which is enormously stressful, so instead of helping you overcome your cause of infertility, you are actually adding more cause to it.

Now that I am pregnant, I eat better than I've ever eaten in my life.  I buy everything I can organically.  I eat whole grains and have nearly eliminated refined grains like white flour that do nothing but harm (it's about as healthy as Kleenex).  I make sure to eat raw fruit or vegetables with every meal so that I can get the benefit of enzymes only present in raw food that actually digest your food.  And on top of that, I take a vegan whole-food prenatal vitamin just to catch any inconsistencies I might have in my diet, ensure the health of my baby, and of course to make my doctor happy!  At every prenatal exam, my doctor is positive about my progress and tells me everything is going better than great.  My baby's heartbeat is always strong, my uterus is growing at an ideal rate and my weight gain is perfect.  I couldn't have a more ideal pregnancy in his eyes.  In the beginning, I told him I was vegan and, just like most people, he was concerned about my protein intake.  I ensured him that I got plenty through things like soy, other beans and vegetables and he never questioned me again, especially since he could see that I was doing exceptionally well in my pregnancy.  I am happy to say that I finally succeeded at growing a strong healthy baby in my vegan uterus.  This little baby is like my proof and validates that I'm doing the right thing.  Whenever people question me now, I just shrug and shake my head.  I don't think I have to say anything to prove I'm not depriving my body or my baby of vital nutrients.  In fact, I'm ensuring that she has everything she needs to start out her life strong.  In no way am I delusional that nothing could happen to my baby even still, but I can feel reassured that I'm doing everything in my power to help her.  

Yes, once she's born, she will continue to be raised vegan.  And just to clear the confusion (because there seems to be a lot of it out there), breastfeeding does not mean a baby is not vegan.  Human breast milk is made for human babies, so just as she received nutrition from me in the womb, she'll continue to receive through breastfeeding when she is born.  As she grows, my husband and I will share with her with the knowledge she needs to continue living healthfully throughout her life.  It will be hard going against the beliefs of the general population, but I know it can be done.  It empowers you as an individual and helps you focus on truths, not just blindly following what everyone else is doing.  I don't want people to think we are depriving our daughter of anything.  I actually feel that the general population of children, including myself, were the deprived ones.  Not just deprived but deceived.  We are opening our daughters eyes to a huge world and feel that teaching her to have compassion for the earth, respect for the natural ways of life and all it's living creatures will be the biggest, most important thing we can teach her about life.  I know it will be challenging, but believe me, I'm used to being challenged and it isn't necessarily a bad thing to teach a child to be too.  Of course I wish society was more accepting of vegans, and we had "convenience" that others do, but the truth is, veganism is getting to be more popular of a lifestyle decision, and is more openly accepted than when I was little.  Even being vegetarian when I was a kid was difficult.  So, hopefully the world will be easier on our daughter, especially if we get out of this small conservative town in the middle of Nowhereville!  HAhahahahaahahahah.... I still dream big. :)