This week, I had a coffee date with a friend of mine and she re-focused me on the original mission of The Plant Milk Project.
My dearest Nicole is a pediatric dietitian. She’s a certified nutrition support clinician; she specializes in feeding issues. She has over a decade of experience in dietetics and nutrition, and I love talking to her because she is always honest.
She will tell you she chose NICU and pediatrics because adults are noncompliant, and it’s annoying. They come into the hospital with diseases they created, but they won’t stop eating the double bacon cheeseburgers with special sauce that are making them sick. But peds is different. Kids can be molded; they want to learn, and parents are always willing to do more for their kids than they do for themselves—their kids eat more vegetables, get more sleep, and drink more water than they do.
My daughter Margot was born into Nicole’s husband’s arms. He’s the neonatologist who attended Margot’s birth. He intubated her and he swept her away to save her life. Seven and a half months later he—along with two other amazing neonatologists who treat the world’s tiniest babies—sent me home with two living, breathing daughters.
Over raspberry rose iced tea, Nicole said to me, “you do all you can when a NICU patient is in your care, but then you have to let them go. You can only hope parents do research and do the right thing.”
I am that parent—the one who researches and asks back-to-back questions without waiting for answers. I arrive at appointments with food intake spreadsheets and pictures of poop. “A dietitian’s dream,” Nicole calls me, and then she tells me I’m not normal.
I’m wired to read and collect data. I’m wired to want to understand everything. When my kids turned one—and then two—they got baked oatmeal instead of cake because even the Dietary Guidelines for Americans say sugar could set them up to prefer overly sweet flavors in life. (And in my mind that could hurt their chances at becoming doctors, or plumbers, or American’s next top chef.) But not all parents know sugar is a hard no for children under two. Even if they do, they may not realize the severity of it. Sometimes by the time a parent realizes the severity, they are in too deep with a toddler who thinks everything should look and taste like Betty Crocker confetti cake.
For kids born way too soon and way too sick, the word outcomes is thrown around a lot. The outcomes for micro preemies improve when babies are kept flat on their backs with minimal movement during their first 72 hours of life. The word outcomes refers to quality of life. Keeping a baby on their backs reduces the risk of brain bleeds that can create cognitive deficits, or issues with the way their brain works, later. Outcomes are better for micro preemies who get physical, occupational, and speech therapy from the start. And while this is not official data, outcomes are better when parents are educated and understand that glasses, hearing aids, and GI’s ban on a sugar exist to give their kids the best quality of life in the long-term.
I started The Plant Milk Project after my deep dive into homemade oat milk improved our outcomes. Switching to homemade oat milk resolved a year-and-a-half-long battle with diarrhea. Plant milk gave Margot a better quality of life. And I wanted that for other babies. I wanted to share how food and feeding helped my daughters go from one-pound babies hanging on by a breathing tube, to 24 pound two-and-a-half year olds shoveling twice baked broccoli and kale potatoes into their chewing holes.
My dearest Nicole is joining The Plant Milk Project as our resident pediatric dietitian. It blows my mind that someone with all her talent and experience would want to join my little corner of the internet. When I asked her why, she said it’s because she wants to be the continuation of her husband’s amazing work…not just because the work is amazing, but because it needs a continuation.
When Nicole told me this, I started crying because that was what The Plant Milk Project was about from the start. This is the continuation of the life-giving work done in NICUs, children’s hospitals, and GI clinics around the world.
It’s a place we hope will inspire you to bake potatoes twice for your toddlers* and ask questions of your doctors to give your family the very best outcomes.
You’ll still be getting recipe recommendations, cookbook love letters, and wild lessons from the throes of motherhood, and now you’ll be getting more than that.
Thank you for reading and sharing our little corner of the internet.
*Cooked, cooled, and re-heated potatoes have more resistant starch, and your colon loves a good resistant starches.
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