Pregnant vegetarian... any advice?!

You should be asking this to your pediatrician, not a bunch of whacked out Vegans. Their answers all come with some issues and a slant that is not in your best interest. Call your doctor and take care of that baby.

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You really need to listen to your prenatal care physician and ask him/her this before you end up needing a perinatologist. Pre-eclampsia and a host of other pregnancy complications are caused by an inefficient diet, lack of minerals and lack of protein.

I'm glad you have sense enough to put baby first. More than I can say for most vegans.

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PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not eat meat. :-)

I have been a vegetarian for 4+ years. This includes my whole pregnancy with my son and I am now pregnant again. My son is healthy as a horse and my baby is healthy too. If you want to do something for the sake of your child, try to add more veggies and fruits to your diet. Also, my doctor told me to take a Flintstones vitamin twice a day to ensure enough nutrients.

Plus, if you eat meat now, it will make you SICK since you haven't been eating it for a while. That's the last thing you need while pregnant!!

You are totally fine being vegetarian while pregnant. My doctors knew about it and know about it now with both pregnancies and they didn't say a word about it being bad for me or anything negative. There's way more pros than cons for not eating meat.

Just add plenty of veggies and fruits and take your vitamins and you will be FINE.

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If you are committed to eating healthy, you do not have to go back to eating meat for your baby. You DO have to become a healthy vegetarian for your baby, though. I suggest seeing a nutritionist or, at the least, picking up a copy of "Raising Vegetarian Children" by Vesanto Melina and Joanne Stepaniak. It has info for you on nutritional requirements from pregnancy through lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence. You CAN get all the nutrients you and your baby need, but you will need to make some sacrifices. It sounds like you're currently ruling out some of your best sources of protein, for example, and that will have to change.

Someone mentioned preeclampsia. There has been an ongoing study of vegan pregnancy since the 70s, looking at the 700+ pregnancies of women from The Farm, a vegan commune in TN. These women are well-wersed in vegan nutrition and have had a preecplamspia rate that is a teeny, tiny, miniscule fraction of the rate among the greater population. I'm not downplaying the risk of preecplampsia in any way, just pointing out that, when all your nutritional requirements are met on a plant-based diet your risk of preeclampsia is probably less, not more, than a meat-eater's.

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