This photo of my baby boy was taken 3 days ago. Apart from the bruise on his forehead (gained whilst believing he could stand unassisted and quickly face-planting into the nearest toy), does this baby look unhealthy? malnourished? Weak and poorly? Showing any signs of 'failure to thrive'?...
OK, fair enough. You'd have to take behavioural aspects into account as well as careful observation of digestive issues/skin-tone etc.
Short of posting photos of baby-poo for your delectation, I assure you, he does a nice big poo twice a day (sometimes thrice), has excellent skin tone, shows no signs of dehydration, sleeps 1.5hrs twice a day, and 11-ish hours at night.
While awake, he is the jolliest little man. My Mum's favourite saying at the moment is, "What a miserable child!" (please insert heavy sarcasm!). He smiles constantly, babbles away merrily, kisses people frequently and generally loves his life. Food, ALL food is an excellent thing to him. Even if the taste is unfamiliar, or he doesn't 'like it', he dutifully opens his little birdy-mouth for more.
So it is utterly, utterly beyond me that people still question my parenting-wisdom in raising him as a vegetarian.
Like most mums, I am hit with a daily barrage of RDI's, RDA's, 'new recommendations', Breast-feeding advocates that will not accept that I am unable to breast-feed, various parenting 'styles', 'expert opinions', etc etc...when they say parenting is a full-time job, they're not bloody kidding.
But, like most jobs, most of the really 'hard' work seems to come from bored/trying to prove something middle management.
The most common outcryings seem to be;
(a) But where does he get his PROTEIN?????!!! Gahhh!!! The PROTEIN!!!
(b) The IRON! The IRON!...Oh Lordy, this child will die forthwith!!
(c) (and this is a relatively recent nutritional obsession of the masses) -What about the Omega-3's and the Omega-6's?? If you don't give him fish he will endure a life of sub-standard intelligence/cretinism/behavioural issues/retarded brain function...blah blah etc etc.
I am simultaneously amused and horrified, and yes, there's always a large portion of my mind that thinks I could do better for my child.
Today, for example, after too many recent 'comments', I have spent nearly 6 hours obsessively analysing his daily nutritional intake just to be sure. This was only possible because I have a nasty dose of the Flu, and Mr Me took a 'family day' off from work so that we could shield the little monkey from any nasty virus that may spew forth from my infected self.
So here's the thing Boys and Girls;
FIRSTLY: He is a mere (almost) 9 months old. This means that he gets most of his nutrition from Formula.
According to his age and weight, he drinks a 200ml bottle 4 times a day (sometimes 5 x).
WARNING: THE NEXT BIT IS DEADLY UNLESS YOU'RE A NUTRITION-IS-RELIGION-NAZI...
This means: He gets 73% of his RDI of calories from formula alone.
He gets 110% of his RDI of PROTEIN from formula alone
He gets 98% and 99% respectively of Omega-3 and Omega-6 from formula alone
He gets 72.7% of his RDI of IRON from formula alone
He gets over 200% of his RDI of calcium from formula alone.
Oh No! Some of those numbers don't say 100%!.
Settle down. He also eats copious amounts of actual food.
Between bottles, my son ingests;
BREAKFAST: 2/3 cup mixed fruit. This week; Mango, Banana, Nectarine puree with baby Farex, + 2 tbsps natural greek yoghurt.
LUNCH: 2/3 cup mixed vegetables (mostly from my garden). This week; roasted potato, kumera, zucchini with broccoli, spinach, cheese and avocado
DINNER: 2 Baby-Iron-Man balls (Red lentils/tofu/almonds) + 1/3 cup homemeade rice pudding with caramelised figs and agave nectar.
SNACKS: 2 rusks, 1-2 slices of wholegrain bread and vegemite, 1 piece of fruit (consumed in increments throughout the day).
His calories are SORTED
His PROTEIN is WELL SORTED
His IRON is SORTED
His vitamins and minerals look pretty damned cheery from where I'm sitting.
Every second day I try to give him some scrambled egg at breakfast or lunch, but he's not loving it. I'll keep trying.
END TOTALLY BORING BIT.
For those of you that have actually objected to me 'denying' my son McDonalds and KFC....ummm, you were kidding....right?
For those of you that are stressing about his lack of chocolate or other refined sugar products...go scratch yourself (oh, and do some research sometime).
For anyone else that thinks they know 'best' for my son;
SOD-THE-HELL-OFF.
Aren't you glad I didn't get into the micronutrients too? :-)
And just to RAM the point home, here's another picture of my horribly waning and desperately undernourished son, taken a week ago.
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