Customer Reviews

The Vegetarian Mother and Baby Book: Completely Revised and Updated

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The Vegetarian Mother and Baby Book is more than a cookbook. It is a guide to raising a baby on a healthy vegetarian diet. Elliot, a vegetarian since the age of 3, offers sensible and comprehensive information for mothers, mothers-to-be, nursing mothers and anyone who is caring for a vegetarian child. The book has information on all the essential nutrients needed during and after pregnancy and what a child needs throughout the various stages. Elliot clearly explains what each nutrient is and which foods have them. Weekly menus incorporating the essential vitamins and nutrients are offered. The down side here is that she suggests a mother begin to offer juices and solids around four to six months and does not incorporate breast milk into a child's diet past 8 months. In her defense it should be noted the book was written before the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with their recommendation of breastfeeding for the first year and into the second year as long as acceptable by both mother and child. Elliot also gives suggestions for planning ahead and how to save time and energy in preparing foods. Her nutrition charts are easy to read and to understand. Recipes range from the obvious Easy Yeast Pizza to the not so obvious Parsley Sauce. A favorite in this house is Healthy Ice Cream, made with soy milk. Mixed in with the recipes and feeding advice are toilet training hints, suggestions for playing with your child and tips on balancing family and work time.

The focus of this book is primarily introducing foods to baby and keeping the food choices vegetarian. It also offers some other baby care tips.

Perhaps it is different in England, but some of the foods she suggests (carrots, spinach) are not recc. in the US for home preparation because of the nitrate content.

Attachment parenting fans will find some suggestions iffy. For instance...

The suggestion that potty training is not possible before 18 mos. runs contrary to what we're doing with our duaghter. Infant potty training is possible (see: Laurie Boucke's books). You can start to potty train any time you are ready to teach.

The book also suggests modified "crying it out" for getting the baby to sleep, and seems to lean to moving the baby into the crib and sleeping independently sooner than is reasonbable. Co-sleeping families are not addressed.

Weaning is suggested at 4-6 mos. and although she includes nursing in her schedules, I don't feel like the tone of the book gives terribly strong support to nursing to the year or beyond.

I found the suggestion of giving a baby carrot or apple to chew on but staying nearby in case they break a piece off a choke silly -- just don't offer it in the first place! They do make teething rings that do not break!

Some of the suggestions were useful -- keeping baby in simple clothing, avoiding too fancy party frocks, not fully bathing a newborn daily but every other day and "top and tail" on the non-bath days, freezing food in ice cube trays, etc.

On the food chapters -- the recipes suitable for freezing are marked with a star, and there's a nice variety to the recipes. Be cautious about allergenic foods -- I feel these aren't marked well enough.

Overall -- a decent book for vegetarian babies, but it takes careful reading. "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron would be a better pick.

This book has many good tips and is quite reassuring. I do have some concerns, but the "Revised and Updated" version I have may not be the most recent, as the latest copyright date I see in it is 1996.

One concern is that she suggests peanut butter and peanut recipes for infants and toddlers, which is currently NOT recommended due to serious allergy risks. Another concern is that she discusses weaning fairly early, at 3 to 6 months. While this is an option for many mothers, it is not optimal and the Peds people are now recommending delaying the introduction of solids until *at least* 6 months (again, allergies). Also, the first suggestion she provides for 4-6 month old infants is juice, which is not usually not very healthy (unless you make your own or buy flash pasturized, etc.).

These are just a few issues I had with the book that I recall off the top of my head. Still, I think it has many great recipes. Hopefully the newer revision(s) addresses these issues.

This book had some good info about nutrition, and good sample recipes, but I thought a lot of the info was too general - it covered a lot of things that I wasn't interested in. She never went in depth about nutrition enough, just kind of short blurbs on general baby care, which is not what I was looking for in this book. It also seemed a bit dated.

I was a little disappointed with this book. I found the nutrition information for mothers-to-be to be far too general (I already knew all the things she had written), and I wanted more nutritional detail for breast feeding and for vegetarian toddlers. I didn't realize that the book is mostly a cookbook... Although I'm currently not quite yet pregnant, I can imagine that the recipes, which are specifically designed for after the baby would be extremely helpful, especially the ones designed to save time and/or to be fed to small children.

An excellent book with tons of great recipes that my baby loves. Good information about how to get protein and what foods to combine to achieve maximum nutritional value.

Although this book does give many good recipies and great meal plans for mamma and baby, I found some of the advice to be not so helpful. "Don't ever heat your baby's food in the microwave..." Then YOU come over and entertain my child while I light a safety candle underneath the pot to heat up his lunch! Also, some of the advice contradicts many pediatricians with regard to when one should introduce certain foods into a baby's diet. You must use your common sense here. Finally, I think the author should stick to meal plans, recipes and nutrition and leave the babycare advice to someone a bit more qualified than a vegetarian astrologer.

This is the only book any mother,vegetarian or not, will need for navigateing the mysterious world of feeding babies without depending on commercial baby food. Rose Elliot's book is clearly divided into easy to read and find sections for age appropriate foods, cautionary foods, nutritional requirements and even complete menus with quick recipies.

I successfully used this book to start my first (non vegetarian) daughter on the road to good nutrition and now 14 years later, I am relying on it again for my 2nd. daughter.

This book is helpful in its simplisity and reassuring in its detailed nutritional information. Without any extra time or trouble any busy mother can use variations of the same foods listed in this book to wean her baby, feed her toddler and serve her whole family tasty healthy meals. This book would make a perfect shower gift!

THis is the book that we give to expectant mothers. Great information and well written