He loved the sweet potatoes so much, the spoon was yanked from my hand.
Solid food sure is a fun time. Not that Luka's eating all that much of it, but it's still fun to explore "real" food with him. We have been introducing about one food per week, and so far his menu includes:
Organic rice cereal
Organic sweet potatoes
Organic Bananas
Organic peas
Avocado
He HATED avocado, which kind of breaks my heart! We will try it again later, of course. Lu eats a variety of solids once a day right now, in between bottles.
Yeah, bottles. I've been avoiding writing about Luka's food because it's a touchy subject with me. But, since this is one of the few vegan baby blogs out there, I feel like I should tell our food story in case it may help others. So, as most vegan parents know, the ONLY way to feed an infant completely vegan is to breast feed. breast milk is the perfect balance of nutrition for a baby. If for some reason you cannot breast feed, a commercially prepared baby formula is the only safe alternative. Sadly, there is no completely vegan formula on the market. The dairy-free formulas all have non vegan vitamin D3 in them, and the dairy formulas are of course made of dairy.
If you have followed this blog since Luka's birth, then you probably remember my trouble with milk production in the beginning. The cards were stacked against me from the start. I never went into labor, so my body was not ready to make milk yet. Then my baby was isolated from me in the NICU with a serious heart/lung disease, and I wasn't even allowed to touch him for almost a week. I began pumping milk right away, and even at his bedside when I could (since contact with your baby helps stimulate milk production). Once I could hold him, we did skin-to-skin. I had two lactation appointments per week, where we got Luka to latch, despite his feeding tube. I was pumping every 2-3 hours, and producing maybe one ounce per day. Every drop I made went through his feeding tube, and that was awesome. He was tiny, so he didn't need much at first. I would bring all my pumped milk to the NICU for them to make bottles out of,and we began feeding him by mouth once his occupational therapy was done and he could eat by mouth. I remember one day I showed up, and the label on his bottle was marked "formula". I cried. When I asked why, they said he already ate all the stored breastmilk I had made. He was growing, and needing more than I could make. my lactation consultant told me to think of the formula as "medicine" until we could get my stores up.
I pumped. I took heaps of lactation supplements for months. I nursed him in between bottles, to help with my production. I fed him breastmilk in bottles so the slow flow of my breast wouldn't frustrate him. I even used the most fucked-up thing I called "the inadequacy contraption",
seen here. I did my best. Eventually, Lu needed to eat way more than I could make, and my supply began to dwindle. I am very glad that he got breast milk for the first four months of his life, even though it couldn't be exclusively. Now his bottles are filled with organic soy formula, which he has to have until the age of one. I hate that it's not my milk, and I hate that the formula isn't completely vegan, but that's the facts, y'all. Luka is being raised vegan, and will only have vegan solid foods. We are really excited to see him enjoy solids, too.
He's such a happy little boy. We can't wait to get him started on all the good vegan foods that mommy and daddy eats!
