Raising vegetarian triplets

With triplets in the house, our family has become accustomed to receiving a fair amount of attention. But our children, Emma, Tess, and Clint, have garnered an extra share of curiosity since their birth four years ago because of the fact that they are all being raised as vegetarians. Already they are local celebrities," having been featured on a Cincinnati television show regarding their diets. The decision to raise the triplets as vegetarians was an easy one for me and my wife, Shon; we had both been vegetarians for approximately ten years before having children. Our own families had accepted our dietary choices, but had some concerns about a healthy pregnancy. But Shon had a very supportive doctor and was, in fact, incredibly healthy throughout her vegetarian pregnancy. The strain of carrying three babies meant that her movements were restricted during the last trimester, but the babies were born extremely strong and healthy at 34 weeks. Shon is definitely proof that a vegetarian diet can support a pregnant mom with not just one fetus, but three!

For the first 15 months of their lives, the primary food in the children's diets was breastmilk. They had breastmilk exclusively until age 7 months, after which time solid foods were introduced along with supplemented breastmilk. Shon became an expert at pumping milk to meet the daily demands of three babies. She was even able to stay ahead of the game, and built up a reserve of milk in the freezer -- enough to provide breastmilk for all three kids for up to two months after she stopped pumping! We are both extremely proud that the triplets were able to have the benefits of breastfeeding for such an extended period.

Emma, Tess, and Clint have not yet been to school, so it has been easy to maintain our preferred diets here at home without pressures from the outside. Our community is not hostile to a vegetarian lifestyle or to issues of animal fights, so we don't foresee that it will be a problem. Living in a rural farming community, the children have opportunity to understand the sources of their food, such as periodically sampling some of the free-range eggs laid by our neighbor's chickens!

A typical day's diet for the triplets includes a wide variety of their favorite foods. Breakfast usually means grits along with hot wheat cereal or perhaps mom's homemade banana wheat pancakes. Another favorite for toast or for sandwiches is dad's fresh, hot, homemade vegan wheat-flax bread (see recipe below). And, of course, like any other vegetarian children, Emma, Tess, and Clint love peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, veggie dogs, burgers, and pasta. Plus they have fruits and vegetables at every meal. A significant amount of our family food budget goes to soymilk alone, which the children guzzle by the liter! All in all, the challenges in our household stem not from any particular difficulties about providing a healthy vegetarian menu, but from the chaos that comes with raising three hungry kids, period!

Our family is extremely concerned about the consumption of junk food and the epidemic of obesity among American children today. My wife and I both feel that breastfeeding is the healthiest start for children, followed by the introduction of natural delicious vegetarian foods. The health and energy of our now preschool-age triplets should be enough to convince anyone of the advantages of a vegetarian diet for children.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Vegetarian Baby and Child
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group