Tips for a Vegan baby in daycare
Hello!
My 10 month old baby has been in daycare now for some time and eating all my wonderful purees but recently we started on table food. Her daycare offers vegetarian options but those include milk, cheese and other animal products (and honestly they are not great). My plan is to talk to my pediatrician and get her to give me note either stating that my baby's diet is perfectly fine OR that she is allergic/ intolerant to animal products (I hope she agrees to one of these!). I have also prepared a letter for the daycare staff that explains what our diet preferences are and that they please treat it as they would treat a religious preference or medical condition. It's short, nice and sweet and I plan to have them sign it agreeing that they won't feed my daughter anything that I don't agree with.
The problem now is how do I approach them about accomodating vegan meals for my baby? Should I ask them what brand of veggie patties they serve so I can check if they are vegan and have no cheese??? I don't want to make a big deal of it but I don't want the baby to have cheese crakers or "garden patty" that has milk!
I'm planning on sending her food given that they may not accomodate vegan meals and if that is the case I am also worried they will judge her diet. Help!
I know I am not the first mom to send vegan kids to daycare so please send me your tips and suggestions!
here are a couple threads w/ some good info:
Vegan baby going to daycare soon
Trouble with vegan at the daycare.
I've basically posted this before, but if you are allowed to bring food, then you should be fine, just make sure to find out what their protein requirements are (if they receive gov. funding or take CYFD they have very specific requirements), and bring a non-dairy milk for her. As far as approaching them about it, be nice. They prob. love your child and want her to be happy, but may not know about veganism. It will probably be an ongoing thing, and realize that sometimes she'll eat something not vegan, no matter how hard you try. Good luck!!
Thank you for the helpful advice and the links! :)
Our daycare has been great with our daughter, they provided us with a meal menu and asked us to circle anything she was ok to eat. We do bring our own veg patties and nuggets, etc. and don't rely on theirs. We also bring rice milk for her. We're really lucky I guess, our daycare has always been supportive and very nice and they just let us know when they're running low on something. Hope everything goes smoothly!