Very much depends on the moment of union which precedes conception.
Never run the risk of conception when you are sick or over-tired or
unhappy; or when your husband is sick, or recovering from sickness,
exhausted, or depressed, or when you are not in full sympathy with him,
or when the children already yours claim for their welfare your entire
strength and time. For the bodily condition of the child, its vigor and
magnetic qualities, are much affected by the conditions ruling this
great moment. Independent of the mutual, spiritual estate, the material
supplied by the father for the vitalizing of the ovum, represents his
THEN state of being, and will continue to represent it in the life it
has helped to organize. If, therefore, this communicated principle
be wanting in vitality or diseased, physical perfection in the child
is not to be expected. This finest secretion of the man’s whole
being--this subtle essence of his nature, which is both spiritual and
physical--should express his best possible condition. After this he can
only affect the child indirectly through his influence on the mother’s
mind.
The more highly-organized the mother, the more child-bearing exhausts
her, because she is drained of her intellectual and spiritual forces.
She, therefore, requires longer periods of rest and recuperation than
the healthy, animal woman who can bear a child every two years for many
succeeding years, and retain health and vigor.
Many of the most lovely, most charming, and altogether admirable women,
become the inmates of insane asylums from having maternity thrust on
them at too near periods of time.
For a child to be well born, his parents should be happily mated
and in good health; the coming together should be mutual, and with
a willingness, if not a desire, for parentage. Quite infrequent
relations, if any, should take place up to the fourth month. This
should, of course, be left entirely to the wife’s decision--to her
feeling of what is right and best for _her_. I have known wives very
desirous of having children, who, on finding themselves pregnant,
could not help turning with glad affection to the father of the child.
Nothing is as yet proved on this head, and there is no telling what
magnetisms may or may not be furnished the embryo at this early stage.
Nature in the woman refuses to entertain the thought of sexual commerce
after the fourth month.