The Mother and Her ChildSadler, William S. (William Samuel)
Science
The Mother and Her Child
Sadler, William S. (William Samuel)
Child care; Infants -- Care; Infants -- Health and hygiene; Pregnancy
Just as soon as it is known that a baby is coming into the home, the
expectant mother should engage the best doctor she can afford. She
should make frequent calls at his office and intelligently carry out
the instruction concerning water drinking, exercise, diet, etc.
Twenty-four hour specimens of urine should be frequently saved and
taken to the physician for examination. In these days the
blood-pressure is closely observed, together with approaching
headaches and other evidences of possible kidney complications. The
early recognition of these dangers is accompanied by the immediate
employment of appropriate sweating procedures and other measures
designed to promote the elimination of body poisons. Thus science is
able effectively to stay the progress of the high blood-pressure of
former days, and which was so often followed by eclampsia--uremic
poisoning.
In these days of careful urine analysis, expertly administered
anaesthetics, and up-to-date hospital confinements, the average
intelligent woman may enter into pregnancy quite free from the oldtime
fears, whose only rewards were grief and cankering care. All fear of
childbirth and all dread of maternal duties and sacrifices do not in
the least lessen the necessary unpleasantness associated with normal
labor. It lies in the choice of every expectant mother to journey
through the months of pregnancy with dissatisfaction and resentment or
with joy and serenity. "The child will be born and laid in your arms
to be fed, cared for, and reared, whether you weep or smile through
the months of waiting."
THE RESENTFUL MOTHER
A little woman came into our office the day of this writing, saying:
"Doctor, I'm just as mad as I can be; I don't want to be pregnant, I
just hate the idea." As I smiled upon this girl-wife of nineteen, I
drew from my desk a sheet of paper and slowly wrote down these words
for the head of a column: "Got a mad on," and for the head of another,
"Got a glad on;" and then we quickly set to work carefully to tabulate
all the results that having a "mad on" would bring. We found to her
dismay that its harvest would be sadness of the heart, husband
unhappy, work unbearable, while all church duties as well as social
functions would be sadly marred. Then, just as carefully, we
tabulated the benefits that would follow having a "glad on." Her face
broke into a smile; she laughed, and as she left the office she
assured me that she would accept Nature's decree, make the best of her
lot, and thus wisely align herself with the normal life demands of old
Mother Nature. This view of her experience, she came to see, would
bring the greatest amount of happiness to both herself and husband.
She left me, declaring that she was just "wild for a baby;" and there
is still echoing in my ears her parting words: "I'm leaving you, Oh,
such a happy girl! and I'm going home to Harold a happy and contented
expectant mother."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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