The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 2 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better BabiesHague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Science
The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 2 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies
Hague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage
If the mother worries or becomes highly nervous during the first few
days of her baby's life, she will so affect her milk as to render it
unfit for baby. If a baby is fed for a number of days after its birth by
its mother, and it should prove afterward that she has not enough milk
to continue feeding it, and has finally to put it on artificial food,
the baby will most likely have acquired slight stomach ailments that may
be troublesome for some time, because in this case both the quality and
the quantity were no doubt wrong. Constipation in the mother will also
cause trouble. The child will develop colic and extreme irritability
until the mother's condition is relieved.
Each of these conditions affecting the milk of the nursing mother
usually demands a change of food for the baby, and the substitution of
the proper artificial food will invariably immediately correct the
trouble. In some cases, however, the quality of the mother's milk is not
dependent upon a temporary temperamental condition, but is caused by
errors in diet, or conduct, or both. The milk of a physically tired,
worn-out mother, is not good, no matter whether the exhaustion is caused
by actual physical labor or by the exactions of a strenuous social
programme. The milk of a mother who persists in eating irregularly, or
who willfully caters to an appetite which craves the rich, highly
seasoned articles of diet, or who attempts to satisfy a legitimate
hunger by drinking large quantities of stale tea or coffee and eating
bread, is unfit for her baby.
These cases are amenable to the proper treatment, which of course means,
that the mother must change her conduct if at fault, and live strictly
upon the diet prescribed elsewhere for nursing mothers.
If these troubles occur in babies who have been fed exclusively upon
artificial food, an entire change of food is frequently necessary.
FRESH AIR FOR BABY
Baby's first journey out of doors depends upon so many contingencies
that no specific age can be given when it would be perfectly safe to
take it.
First, the weather and season of the year should be considered. The baby
should not be taken out at all when it is wet, or foggy, or very humid;
nor when it is extremely cold.
Second, the vigor or vitality of the individual child must be
considered. Some children can safely be taken out if the weather is
propitious when two weeks old, others cannot be taken out without risk
until they are two months old, regardless of the weather conditions. If
a child is robust at birth, and nurses well, and increases in weight
from the beginning, he can be taken out when he is two weeks old while
the sun shines during the middle of the day. If a child is small and
puny when born, and begins to have nursing troubles from the beginning,
does not increase in weight, is fretting, and crying, and sleeps
spasmodically, it would be unsafe to take it out before the sixth week
unless it is at a season of the year which would justify exposure to the
sunshine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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