better

[mamajoan]

I'm much better today. I did lie down on my office floor yesterday and snooze a bit, though it wasn't the most comfortable spot. In the evening I took Isaac over to my mom's place because I wasn't up to the task of entertaining him or feeding him dinner. Fortunately, after some good grandma-playing, he went to bed easily once we got home. I went down almost immediately after, and got in a solid four hours before he woke up at 2ish. Took about 15 minutes to get him back down, and then we slept again till 7, albeit me more restlessly (less restfully?). So I feel pretty much human again today. I'm even eating! Woo!

I decided to take tomorrow off work in addition to Friday. I have to take Friday because my daycare is closed; and tomorrow would be my work-from-home day, so nothing would get done anyway, and I might as well make it official so I don't have to feel guilty about not doing any work. This way I can get a bit caught up on sleep, and do some shopping and prep work for my cookie party Sunday.

And now that I'm feeling better, I can do a little musing about something that happened on Monday that really upset me.

Here's the background: I've been a vegetarian for many many years and have so far kept Isaac vegetarian as well, although I've done a lot of soul-searching and flip-flopping on what I really want to do (e.g., let him have meat at other people's houses? insist that he remain 100% vegetarian? let him decide for himself at some point?). I haven't decided, though, so thus far he's still pretty much 100% vegetarian. His daycare knows this and they have been great about accomodating us. Each month they provide a menu for the coming month and on any particular day if the main lunch item is meat, I bring something in for him to have instead. We haven't had any problems with it. As further background I'll add that on his daily report sheet his teacher always writes what he ate (although now that he's in the toddler room they no longer write amounts, so there's no way to know whether he ate one bite or a huge plateful).

OK, so on Monday when I picked him up, it said on his daily sheet for lunch, "pancakes w/syrup, sausages, pineapple." I honestly just glanced at it, and it wasn't until I got in the car and was driving that I thought, "wait a minute, sausages?" and checked again. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd noticed it sooner, though, because his teacher was already gone when I picked him up.

I'll skip to the end of the story at this point and say that it turned out to be a harmless mistake -- his teacher was on autopilot when she wrote the sheets, and wrote "sausages" on Isaac's sheet even though, she assures me, he did not actually eat sausages.

But what really drives me to post about this is my own reaction during the time before I found that out, when I thought that he might actually have eaten some meat. I was really surprised by how upset I was. Intellectually I can say, "well, one serving of sausages isn't going to kill him, innocent mistake, etc.", but emotionally it gave me a LOT more trouble. I actually broke down crying in the car on the way home and had to force myself to think about something else just so I could see to drive.

Later, with the help of some folks on a parenting list and some personal introspection, I came to the following conclusions: 1. It wasn't so much about the meat-eating specifically, but about the sudden harsh realization/demonstration that you are not always in control of what happens to your child. You put him out in the world, entrusting him to people, and even if they ARE trustworthy, they can still harm him (deliberately or not) and you can't do anything about it. You know this, of course, but knowing it and feeling it are different things. And 2. The idea of other people feeding Isaac meat does bother me a lot more than I realized.

So, with #1, well, not much I can do there. Recognize and acknowledge the feelings, and move on. As for #2, it seems pretty clear-cut to me now; I'm going to keep Isaac a vegetarian and not do the "you can have meat at grandma's house" thing, because it doesn't feel right to me. If at some point he says "hey mom, I wanna try me a burger," then I'll decide what to do based on how old/mature he is and how it "feels" at that point.

So that's the saga -- of course, I can sum it all up calmly now, but at the time it was very stressful. Then my whole stomach-flu incident came along and put perspective on things. ;)

Comments

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I think there might be an issue with his being able to digest meat later if he doesn't have it by a certain age, with regard to his being able to produce certain enzymes... you might want to check with your pediatrician on this.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I have heard that, but I've also been told that since he eats dairy and eggs, he'll be able to digest animal proteins okay. I don't know if that's true and haven't been able to find any info with a quick Google. But honestly, even if I knew that keeping him vegetarian was likely to make him unable to ever eat meat, I would still keep him vegetarian. Because feeding him meat just so that he'll be able to choose to eat it later if he wants to, seems really wrong (and silly) to me. Just my opinion!

Oh, and I wouldn't bother with my pediatrician on this stuff -- I doubt she'd have a clue.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

"feeding him meat just so that he'll be able to choose to eat it later if he wants to, seems really wrong (and silly) to me"

Well, that was pretty much why I did it with Ilana. I wanted her to be able to make an informed choice about eating meat, to know what it was she was eating when she was eating it, so I wanted to hold off on giving her meat until she understood where it came from. But I heard all that stuff about the enzymes and that turned me off that route.

It'd be good if the dairy and eggs were sufficient - and if they are, I wish someone had told ME! I would have waited to give Ilana meat. Not that I think it would have made any difference; I think she'd have tried meat and loved it anyhow. (She's a huge carnivore, like her dad) But I'm glad she also loves beans, fake chicken patties, peanut butter, eggs, cheese, and other sources of protein.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Well, see, this is why I've been so conflicted about the issue. A big part of me does feel like I should provide Isaac every opportunity to make his own choices; but another big part of me feels, like tiggrrl said in another comment, that part of parenting is making decisions on your child's behalf that may involve closing off possibilities to him/her in his/her later life. So if my making the decision to have Isaac be a vegetarian means denying him the choice to become a carnivore later in life, so be it. But my phrasing it that way isn't meant to imply that I'm 100% sure! How often as parents are we really 100% sure about anything, you know?

Oh, and also, I found this --
http://vegweb.com/cgi/faq/smartfaq.cgi?subject=1003688419
"I am not aware of any studies that indicate that infants raised on a vegetarian diet fail to develop enzymes that would prevent them from digesting meat later in life. I do know that any change in your diet will require a period of adjustment for your body to get accustomed to the new foods. When there are drastic dietary changes, the body may not have enough digestive enzymes or beneficial bacteria to assimilate the new foods properly. However, this is only temporary and the body will correct itself in time. ... I have not heard of any vegetarian raised children growing up and having permanent difficulty eating meat...."

Obviously you have to consider the source (it's from a vegetarian website) but I think it's fairly reliable especially considering that I've spent a lot of time searching the web today and not found anything conclusive in the other direction....

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Oh cool! Thanks for the info.

[flick.livejournal.com]

That is not the case, ime.

I spent a very long time only eating chicken and fish, and found subsequently that if I ate red meat it gave me stomach problems.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

But isn't it possible that if you had suffered through the stomach problems and kept eating red meat regularly, you would eventually have adjusted? I mean, maybe not, but unless you tried it, who knows, right?

[flick.livejournal.com]

Oh, certainly, but that is the case if you've been vegan, as well: you will eventually adjust.

[azurelunatic]

I've heard (not sure where) that raising a child exclusively vegetarian will have them not develop certain digestive talents needed to digest meat. Do you know if there's any truth to that, or if it's yet another urban legend?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

see my reply to anotherjen above.

[xochiquetzl]

Yeah, I imagine that if it was me and I had a child, I would be a lot less upset about my child eating meat than I would be about someone making the decision about whether or not he ate meat for me. Which I think is the problem: You haven't made that decision yet, and you thought his day care had made it for you. And I would be upset by that, too.

[algernon-mouse.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you've posted regarding this before, but I'd be really interested to know how you became a vegetarian, if you feel like sharing.

[peterchayward.livejournal.com]

Aye.

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

If your pediatrician can't advise you about whether or not the 100% vegetarian diet is OK for Isaac - and the only problem I can see is his age and what other people said about developing digestive tracts, you need a new pediatrician - he or she SHOULD be up on this kind of thing, it is a very basic part of their job in looking after your little one.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure I agree. I rely on my pediatrician for medical matters, and I'm not sure that "if I feed my child a 100% vegetarian diet, will he be incapable of eating meat when he gets older?" counts as a medical issue. Certainly not something I'd expect her to know offhand.

Now, if it were "is it okay to feed my child 100% vegetarian?" or even "How can I make sure my vegetarian child is getting proper nutrition?" then I would certainly expect her to be able to answer those questions. She knows we're vegetarian, and she and I have discussed nutrition issues, so I know we're on the same page there. But I think the digestion thing is a little more esoteric and I wouldn't necessarily expect her to be able to answer it -- at least without doing some research, which I can just as easily do myself.

[victoriacatlady.livejournal.com]

Also, physicians in general know only the most basic information about nutrition. I suppose you've asked her whether Isaac will be all right on a vegetarian diet? (Actually, rereading, I see you definitely have.) Since he eats dairy and eggs, he probably is getting enough protein. Possibly there might be a shortage of iron, though menstruating women (and probably pregnant ones) also need a lot of iron. A good multi-vitamin, multi-mineral tablet will probably take care of that, though (if you give him vitamins).

Note: I am not a nutritionist, nor do I play one on TV. So feel free to sneer at my nutritional suppositions above.

[tiggrrl.livejournal.com]

My sister was raised 100% veg from birth, never wanted to try meat as far as I know, and never did. I join you on the idea that feeding him meat so that he can decide later to eat meat if he wants to is just silly. You are probably doing all kinds of things in raising him that close off certain future possibilities for him (or make them a lot less likely), that's just the way life works. Of course, you're trying to close off the negative possibilities while keeping the positive ones intact, and frankly, I think that's exactly what you're doing by keeping him vegetarian.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Exactly. That was one of my big "lightbulb moments" during my pregnancy -- you can say you don't want to impose your lifestyle choices on your child, etc., but by the very act of bringing him into being and raising him, at least for the first few years, you make a lot of decisions for him. You *can't* leave all the decisions up to someone who starts off as a teeny baby. The trick is to balance the ones you have to make vs. the ones you can leave for him to decide later, and if you have to sacrifice a later one for a now one, well, so be it.

But, uh, you phrased it better than I did. ;)