Let me again urge upon you the importance, if it be at all practicable, of keeping the child _entirely_ to the breast for the first three or four months of his existence. Remember there is no _real_ substitute for a mother’s milk; there is no food so well adapted to his stomach; there is no diet equal to it in developing muscle, in making bone, or in producing that beautiful plump rounded contour of the limbs; there is nothing like a mother’s milk _alone_ in making a child contented and happy, in laying the foundation of a healthy constitution, in preparing the body for a long life, in giving him tone to resist disease, or in causing him to cut his teeth easily and well; in short, _the mother’s milk is the greatest temporal blessing an infant can possess_. As a general rule, therefore, when the child and the mother are tolerably strong, he is better _without artificial_ food until he has attained the age of three or four months; then it will usually be necessary to feed him twice a day, so as gradually to prepare him to be weaned (if possible) at the end of nine months. The food mentioned in the foregoing conversation will be the best for him, commencing _without_ the cow’s milk, but gradually adding it, as less mother’s milk and more artificial food be given. 36. _When the mother is not able to suckle her infant herself, what ought to be done?_ It must first be ascertained, _beyond all doubt_, that a mother is not able to suckle her own child. Many delicate ladies do suckle their infants with advantage, not only to their offspring, but to themselves. “I will maintain,” says Steele, “that the mother grows stronger by it, and will have her health better than she would have otherwise. She will find it the greatest cure and preservative for the vapors [nervousness] and future miscarriages, much beyond any other remedy whatsoever. Her children will be like giants, whereas otherwise they are but living shadows, and like unripe fruit; and certainly if a woman is strong enough to bring forth a child, she is beyond all doubt strong enough to nurse it afterward.” Many mothers are never so well as when they are nursing; besides, suckling prevents a lady from becoming pregnant so frequently as she otherwise would. This, if she be delicate, is an important consideration, and more especially if she be subject to miscarry. The effects of a miscarriage are far more weakening than those of suckling. A hireling, let her be ever so well inclined, can never have the affection and unceasing assiduity of a mother, and, therefore, cannot perform the duties of suckling with equal advantage to the baby.