Diagrams showing successive steps in giving pack 212 64. Giving the baby an enema 217 65. Quilted robe for the premature baby 220 66. Bed for premature baby improvised from a clothes basket 221 67. The baby in a basket, ready to travel 224 GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER CHAPTER I GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER How does it seem to you—the coming of a baby? Does it seem the most amazing of miracles, so stirring in its beauty and mystery that you are eager to make ready and prepare for it fitly? Or have you, perhaps, come to share the general feeling that motherhood is a natural state which one accepts when it comes, but need not prepare for? This attitude seems to go back to a very old and deeply rooted conviction that, as women always have had babies and have had them through the working of one of Nature’s laws that has been operating over and over throughout the ages, they doubtless will continue to have them in the same old way, and the entire matter may well be left to take care of itself. As to the baby, when he comes, one may expect that the ability to care for him will come too. Because of this reasoning, or lack of it, it has been a fairly general custom for the woman who expected a baby to seek her doctor’s aid only when she went into labor, or shortly beforehand, and to give no thought to the care of her baby until he was born. All too often the mother has died, because of this tardy care, been injured or become an invalid, while equally sad things have happened to the baby—and needlessly so. But now, happily, a great change is taking place in the realm of mothers and babies. We still realize, of course, that childbearing is a natural function, but we know that conditions must be made favorable for the smooth working of this natural law if all is to be well; that for the sake of both mother and baby it is of urgent importance to give thought and care to the baby during the nine months before he is born. There is little doubt that the most critical period in one’s life is the first ten months—the nine months before birth and the first month afterward—and that the care which is given during these months influences one’s physical state, for good or ill, throughout all the rest of life. In the light of this knowledge, women are more and more generally seeking and being given “prenatal care,” which is care before the baby is born, together with advice and instructions which fit them to assume motherhood safely and successfully.