It is important that the child should be suckled at regular intervals of
about three hours during the day; and if this be done the last thing at
night, and the first thing in the morning, there will be no need of giving
it the breast during the night. With a little perseverance on the part of
the mother, the child soon learns not to require the breast at this time,
which ensures her a good night, and spares her much trouble and annoyance.
Those mothers who are obliged to suckle their children at all hours of the
night to pacify their screaming, have brought the trouble upon their own
heads, for if, instead of dosing the children with castor oil, and feeding
them for the first day or two after birth, they had put them to the breast
at once, the derangement of stomach and bowels which is the cause of this
restlessness would have been avoided.
_Diet during lactation._ Attention should be also paid to the diet of the
mother, for upon this subject much erroneous opinion prevails. If she be
strong and healthy, her food should be entirely farinaceous for the first
three or four days, using gruel, tapioca, farinaceous powder, arrow root,
&c. with a due admixture of milk; if there are no symptoms to forbid it,
an egg may now be taken in the morning, and she may gradually proceed from
chicken, &c. to the stronger meats, as her general condition and appetite
point out. Where she is naturally delicate, or has been weakened by a
sickly pregnancy, &c. it will be advisable to allow her chicken broth, and
weak beef-tea from an earlier period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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