A Vegan Mother Against Dairy

CW: birth, trauma, breastfeeding, nonhuman oppression

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I only tend to talk about this when I’m in the midst of a full-on trauma-induced panic where I can’t control my body until I calm down. I curse. I hyperventilate. I panic. I curse some more. I can’t explain it, and I’m still working on healing. I don’t think most people can understand how it feels like for something so simple and out of the blue to trigger a full-on flight/fight response from your brain. One minute you are in a discussion, and the next you’ve lost control because your body goes into survival mode. It’s been over 4 years since that traumatic journey happened. I figured it’s time to put this out there to the vegan world.

What’s kept me from admitting this publicly? The shaming and the shame.

It all started with 37 hours of active labor — yup, 37 hours. My cervix is, apparently, more stubborn than even I am as a whole person. It would not dilate. I was already 42 weeks, and I had a family history of no dilation. Most stories of births are amazing and beautiful and empowering. Mine was fucked up. There’s no sugar coating it. It was really fucked up and about the last thing I would ever describe as beautiful.

I’ll start by saying that I live in a country with safe birthing rates and completely midwife assisted, where only doctors become involved in an emergency. Lactation experts are provided and midwives, experts in lactation, visit your home after birth for as long as you need. It’s all paid for — by law.

So, now that we have that out of the way, here’s what happened next…

The midwives insisted I *must* give natural birth. When I say insisted, I mean they refused to call a doctor when I demanded one and refused me an epidural until I threatened to self-harm (yeah, my contractions were that bad and got worse when I started to vomit from the pain) and even after 37 hours, they removed the epidural without consent because they wanted me to feel the birth, as I was made to push for two hours without result and half unconscious.

And then, my uterus ruptured. I barely remember anything from my son’s birth since I was in and out of consciousness, I was hallucinating, and in the midst of a panic while being rushed off for an emergency c-section despite having asked for doctors so I could consent to one 20 hours earlier.

At this point, I had been vegan about 6–7 years. I considered myself an ardent animal rights activist, and I was delighted to find that there was a vegan soy formula on the market where I lived (this is quite unusual since even most soy formula contains animal byproducts). I was formula-fed, and even though I wanted so badly to breastfeed, I also recognized that anything could happen. So, I planned for it — just in case.

My baby was born at around 3 am, but I didn’t get to meet him until that afternoon. See, I had to regain consciousness first.

I don’t think I will ever be able to explain what it felt like to go through all that, but numbness and sorrow come to mind. I think that’s where my survival mode kicked in between the confusion, guilt, and feelings of failure. And from there, things just got worse.

I had a perfect, healthy vegan pregnancy, and my baby was over 8 pounds. My son was the biggest baby on the birthing floor. I was a proud mama. I couldn’t wait to bond with him and nurse him.

However, my breast milk never came — no matter how long my son was on my breasts or how much I pumped. All with pain since I was refused pain medication. Yes, even with a ruptured uterus and an emergency csection. At the hospital, a midwife told me I was a liar and that I was not in pain when I asked for pain meds. No midwife would give me pain relief — apart from something akin to a tylenol (and only after asking so many times), which isn’t much help when you’ve been sliced open to remove a small human from inside your body and one of your organs has burst open in the process.

Remember that soy formula? My son had dropped over 10 percent of his weight and still no milk in sight. The head pediatrician found out I was vegan — and just what we needed — threatened us. Even though we had the vegan soy formula approved and on hand in my hospital bag, we were reminded that vegan parents have their children taken away from them. My son was forced to consume a sugar solution for close to 48 hours until we gave in and gave him the cow milk based formula. See, at this point, his weight loss was being blamed on *me*, my veganism, and to add to my trauma, I started to believe that I’d be leaving the hospital without my child.

I remember my husband and I making the decision. I was distraught. I couldn’t help thinking of the cow that was abused, tortured, and most likely already slaughtered along with her own babies — for her milk. I couldn’t even look at the can of formula. I couldn’t bring myself to feed my own baby something that I knew was made out of someone else’s abuse and oppression. I told myself I would pump as much as the midwives said I had to so my milk finally came in and I would bare the pain I was in. My husband did all the bottle feedings. I couldn’t even look at the bottles.

I pumped diligently every 2 hours for 3 weeks before finally collapsing from the pain and asking my husband to please take me to the emergency room. Three weeks of empty bottles after pumping each breast — my breasts never produced any milk beyond drops.

Still, even though I could not move from the horrific pain, I was reminded again at the hospital that if I took the pain medication, I would not be able to breast feed. This, even though they knew fully that I was not producing enough to feed my child and no alternatives existed beyond formula. My husband was the only person that assured me I had not failed and that it would be OK. To this day, I am so grateful for that. However, even his unwavering support was no match for the cruel claims from the vegan and parenting community, which insisted that I didn’t try hard enough, that I must not be vegan, that I just was not educated enough, that I should have gotten a random stranger’s donor milk, that x, y, and z. The pitiful looks at the mom groups when I took out the bottle, the comments of how I took the easy way out, being refused the use of a microwave or refused water at a cafe or restaurant…The worst? The claims from my own community that I must not be a vegan mother against dairy…I must not truly care for nonhumans.

So, this is how I became a vegan mother against dairy that met reality one day — the reality of the risk of child birth, the reality that no matter what you do sometimes things take a turn, the reality of how much we live in a non-vegan world, and the reality that vegans aren’t actually helping by not addressing root issues…

The story, however, does not end there. Fast forward two years, I gave birth to my youngest. Something still very taboo — I had to become medicated in my last trimester due to my previous birth trauma. I had convinced myself that the midwives were going to murder me and refuse me pain medication all over again (I had told myself that I had healed from my previous birth and everything would be OK; unfortunately, my body went into survival mode and anxiety attacks about 5 months into the pregnancy). During our visit to the new hospital in my last trimester, I had a panic attack in the middle of the recuperation room upon catching a glimpse of a pumping machine. See, that’s how trauma works. You never know when it’s going to hit and you can’t control it. Your body tells you — “you are so fucked and you are going to die!” And it becomes your reality, which means your body fights against an invisible threat.

I had a scheduled c-section due to my ruptured uterus. Things went much more smoothly this time. I’m actually even smiling in the photos taken upon meeting my second baby seconds after his birth. The hospital staff was quite accommodating this time as well. Although the midwives would make comments as to my refusing to use a pumping machine to get the milk to come faster. Thanks, but no thanks. My milk came in and when I say came in — It. Came. In. No pumping required. My breasts were so full that I grew from a B to a DD bra size.

My baby was eating well, but despite all that, he stopped thriving after birth. I had two midwives at home monitoring us, and unfortunately, he stopped gaining weight, as his milk was always coming back up. He could not handle laying flat at all. Eventually, we had problems waking him up. So, the midwife finally said that we needed to take him to a doctor. Tests later, turned out my little one was allergic to my breast milk protein — yes, it’s a thing. I was surprised too. He started a special formula made from predigested amino acids and has been thriving since.

And here’s the thing, hundreds of vegan parents have been through what I have been through even though we wanted nothing more than to hold our babies and feed them with our own milk. I read their stories when they finally find the strength to open up about their own experiences, which tends to happen once a safe vegan parent has been identified. Many of us just do not feel safe speaking about our experiences and trauma in vegan/parenting spaces because of the shaming. Many of us still suffer from the trauma of birth and being told continuously how we have failed our babies — and nonhumans. We are sick of hearing about the myths, misinformation, unfounded claims of formula when our babies would be dead without formula — no, donor milk is not a solution for everything.

Why am I writing this? Because no matter what, whether it is by choice or whether a person cannot produce breast milk or whether a baby is allergic/intolerant of their own parent’s milk, what we need to be doing is addressing root issues. Formula saves lives much like medication, and if you wouldn’t tell a vegan activist to stop taking their meds and die or if you wouldn’t refuse medical help, then why would you expect a vegan infant to go without something they need to survive?

The root issue here is working on accessibility and support for parents that currently do not have it so they can breast feed if that’s what they want and can do, BUT as vegans, we have to also fight for plant-based formula alternatives to cow milk formula that are available for those that will undoubtedly need it. This is a reality that seems to escape many vegans around this issue. Formula companies need to be held accountable, as well as any other industry that has been culpable in the exploitation of both humans and nonhumans (think about worker’s rights exploitation in plant foods and the nonhumans harmed in that process as well!).

It’s easier to target a specific group, to get on board with pseudoscience and bias, as well as promote alternatives that don’t take into account so many other things than it is to work on root issues. However, we won’t make progress until we focus on those root issues. No alternative is not an alternative, and single-issue/single-focus campaigns aren’t getting us anywhere.

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