What a Young Wife Ought to KnowDrake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Science
What a Young Wife Ought to Know
Drake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Infants -- Care; Marriage; Women -- Health and hygiene
Sitting down when tired and overheated or excited to nurse your little
one, do not wonder if you have a cross, fretful, and many times, feverish
child as the result. When under a fit of anger, the mother’s milk has
many times produced in the child very alarming symptoms, and sometimes
even caused death. This, in an exaggerated way, shows us what the effect
is upon the delicate nervous temperament of the child, if the mother is
not in healthful tone herself.
A healthy, well-trained baby, should in the first weeks, sleep twenty out
of the twenty-four hours. The sleep should be quiet and natural, and the
baby will in the remaining four hours eat and stretch itself and grow.
Regularity of feeding in the first few weeks will not be as possible
as later, for the little one will sleep over its feeding times. Do not
imagine from this that when it does eat it should have a double quantity,
for the stomach has not expanded in its sleep, and will hold no more than
when fed each two hours. It is estimated that a newborn baby’s stomach
will hold but three or four tablespoonfuls, and this should regulate the
quantity of food at each feeding, if the baby is bottle fed. If a nursing
baby, nature regulates the quantity, if regularity of habit is observed,
as no more is secreted than is needed, as a rule.
In tiny babyhood the child’s liver is very large in proportion to its
size, and the size of the other organs, hence it will sometimes make
trouble when the child is nursed on the right side; as the weight of the
liver pressing on the full stomach causes distress. When you observe that
the child fusses after nursing the right breast, hold it as when nursing
the left breast with the feet under the right arm, and when laying it
down lay it on the right side, and you will relieve the difficulty.
Every mother should know that “in early childhood there is no relation
between the intensity of the symptoms, and the material lesion, or
derangement. The most intense fever with restlessness, cries and
spasmodic movements, may disappear in twenty-four hours without leaving
any traces. The intense nervous excitability in a robust child will often
communicate a false appearance of gravity, to a trivial ailment.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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