CARE OF THE BABY.
The More Thoughtful Treatment of Babies Than Formerly.—The
First Attention That Baby Needs.—Its Oil Bath.—The Care
of the Eyes.—The Care of the Placentic Cord.—Baby’s First
Bath.—Its Covering After the Bath.—The Basket.—Regularity
in Nursing.—Waking at Night.—Rocking to Sleep.—Quantity of
Food.—The Appointments of the Nursery.—The Mother and the Care
of her own Children.—To her Children the Mother Should be the
Dearest Creature in the World.—The Babies Born of Love.—The
Babies Born in Bitterness.—The Responsibilities and Joys of
Motherhood.
“It is a mother, said the Angel, who has already given her
child the welcome that makes a joyous soul. He shall not miss
her smile. He is what she is. He will need love since he will
give so much, and she is all compact of love. She is one of the
forces of life. To be the mate of such a woman, the father of
such heirs, as she will give, is a fate a man might pray God
for. Love has not grown stale with them, their children are the
very blossoms of it. Her eyes are deeper pools of love each
year.”—FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
Time was when the little one and its comfort was not so thought of as
it is to-day. It was not considered that the little one in its tedious
journey had become tired and needed rest; or that its change of abodes
and climates is so marked that the transition is not an easy one. It was
plunged into a full bath, or exposed to the air, was sponged over, often
with soap that was not too pure, and the only resulting virtue was the
full expansion of lungs, because of the lusty crying from such rough
handling.
To-day many physicians advocate wrapping the new baby in cotton batting,
covering it quite closely, and laying it away in a warm corner for
several hours, until it becomes in a measure adjusted to the change of
residence. Then, instead of a thorough washing, it is treated to an oil
bath before a warm fire, with only a small part of its body exposed at
one time. Good clean lard is the best emollient, as it removes most
easily the vernix caseosa with which the baby is more or less covered. By
some sweet oil is preferred.
After the little one has had its rest, the nurse with her basket at
hand, her oil on the hearth well warmed, is ready to give it its first
dressing. Use a small piece of absorbent cotton for the sponge to oil
it with. Cover the head well with the oil and with a soft piece of old
linen rub it off, and with it will come the cheesy substance called
vernix caseosa, and leave the head clean. Do this with the entire
body, little by little, taking great care that all the creases, which
are numerous, shall be thoroughly clean and left well oiled, that no
chafing may follow. For a week your baby will need no other than the
oil bath daily, and the restfulness and comfort of the little one will
be expressed in sleep, _sleep_, SLEEP. The full bath in water should be
reached by degrees only; proceeding from a partial bath with sponge, to a
full sponge bath; then as the baby grows stronger, put it into the tub.
Approached in this way, few babies but will take their bath with delight,
and look forward to it daily.
As soon as the baby is born, even before the cord is severed, the eyes of
the little one should be washed thoroughly. With a soft bit of linen and
a cup of warm water previously boiled, the eyes can be readily cleansed,
and thus cared for, you will rarely have any trouble with the eyes
thereafter. Keep them turned from the light while dressing, and at no
time let a strong light fall upon the eyes.
In dressing the cord, wrap it in a bit of absorbent cotton four inches
square. Cut or tear a hole in the middle of this, draw the loop of cord
through, wrap the cotton about it and turn it up and hold it in place
with the band pinned only sufficiently close to hold the cord and its
dressing in place. The cord will need no further attention until it has
dried and dropped off, unless the band in slipping up pulls upon the
dressing and irritates the little one. Dressed in this manner the navel
heals smooth and clean, and will need nothing further than a dusting with
calendulated boracic acid, should it not be perfectly dry when the cord
drops.
An excellent blanket to receive the child from the bath is made of coarse
Germantown yarn, knitted into a strip three-quarters of a yard wide,
and a yard and a half in length. This is sufficiently large to wrap the
baby well in until it is dry and ready to be dressed. Some prefer the
receiving apron. This is made of coarse, heavy flannel, and worn by the
nurse at the time of the bath. The baby is lifted from the tub, and
wrapped in the apron as in the blanket.
Now the little one is ready for its first suit, as described in the
chapter on baby’s dress, and then to be put into its basket-bed for a
long nap. The cradle-basket hardly needs further description, but a few
words define it. It is simply a well padded clothes-basket, and may be
ornamented as much or as little as the fancy dictates. It serves as a
snug nest for the little one, as deep in the folds of the soft blankets
and dainty pads it is securely sheltered from any draft, and artificial
warmth can be easily applied by hot water bottles at the sides and foot.
This basket should be its bed for months, or until it is outgrown. “But,”
mothers sometimes say to me, “it is so difficult to reach over and get
the baby for feeding in the night;” and I respond, “A well trained baby
will have no night feeding.” Remember that more can be taught the little
one in the first few weeks, than it can unlearn in the next few months
without very diligent effort and patient persistence.
Should the little one make its advent in the night, it is more easily
broken to good habits, than when it comes in the daytime. Why? Because it
will sleep the remainder of the night and wake to be put to the breast
some time during the day, and then again toward night, when it will be
ready for another night of sleep. Of course this may seem a theoretical
baby, and not at all real; and I will admit that some of these perverse
little specimens of humanity put to flight every theory that has been or
can be made, while a few are models from the beginning.
If he does not like his surroundings, and refuses to be comforted, the
night may have to be turned in to day for a short time, when gradually he
must be gotten into line for sleeping at night, and having his wakeful
time in the day. Fed at nine or ten at night, if he is properly adjusted,
he will make no trouble until five or six in the morning. Should he
nestle and fret, often a change in its position, a dry napkin, and a few
drops of warm water, will send him off to sleep again for the remainder
of the night.
That this can be done and the babies be heartier and stronger for it,
I have proven with three of my very own, and many others under my
care. That the mother will be stronger for having her night’s sleep
uninterrupted goes without saying. Should the baby be troublesome at
first and so get into bad habits, the sooner it is broken of them and
gotten into right ways the better for the mother and child.
However much the mother may enjoy it, it is better for the little one
not to be rocked to sleep. Fed and placed in its bed, it will soon fall
asleep, and wake when its nap is over to lie there in content, should it
not be time for another meal.
The answer to the question, how often shall the child be fed, is, that
it depends upon the baby. The rule, however, is once in two hours the
first two months, then lengthen the time by half an hour, each month
thereafter, until it gets down to four meals a day, which will be needed
until it is a year old. Should it be so unfortunate as to be a bottle-fed
baby, then the quantity must be regulated as well. Beginning with two
ounces, gradually increase until the limit of six ounces has been reached.
This is the rule, we have said, but not quite all babies submit kindly
to the rule. You may be obliged to begin with a meal once in an hour
and a half, but if so, you can soon regulate it to the proper time,
and all will be well. In talking with Dr. Shipman, who was at the head
of a large foundlings’ home in Chicago, he said, “The first rule when
a baby is brought in is to break it from night feeding, and we have
little difficulty in doing this after the first two or three nights.”
The trouble too often is, the parents need breaking in, before they can
patiently and persistently train a child in the right way. Their own
habits are not fixed and methodical, and they find it difficult to train
their children into right ways of living and doing.
The nursery should be a sunny, pleasant room, large and cheerful, for
here much of the time of the mother will be spent, whether she be able to
keep a nurse to share with her the care of the little one or not. No true
mother gives over the entire care of her children to a nurse, however
efficient and kindly and cultured and wise the nurse she may have, may
be; but she will keep the oversight and spend hours daily with her little
ones, in their care and supervision and tender mothering, which no one
else can give the child which is part of her very self. Mother should be
to them the dearest being in the world, and no one should be allowed to
come nearer them than she, in her loving sympathetic devotion and care.
Through all the months of pregnancy, the thoughts of motherhood have been
taking root in her heart (we wish we might say in every case, “watered
by joy and gladness,” but not always is this so); sometimes the roots
are set in bitterness, and the little soul growing to maturity under her
heart, is absorbing the bitterness, to the sorrow and hurt of all its
after life.
Of the first class Mrs. Burnett has given us a lovely type. A mother
is looking down into the face of her firstborn, and exclaims, “And this
fair soul given to me from the outer bounds, we know not, and the little
human body it wakened to life in; think you that Christ will help me to
fold them in love, high and pure enough, and teach the human body to do
honor to its soul? Surely that which He made in His own image, would not
that it should despise itself and its own wonders, but do them reverence
and rejoice in them nobly, honoring all their seasons and their changes.
I pray for a great soul, and great wit, and great power to help this
fair human thing to grow, and love and live.” Is it any wonder that she
should say of such a mother, “’Twas not mere love she gave her offspring.
She gave them of her constant thought, and of honor such as taught
them reverence of themselves as of all other human things. She was the
noblest creature that they knew; her beauty, her great unswerving love,
her truth, were things bearing to their child eyes the unchangingness of
God’s stars in heaven.”
Again Mrs. Spofford in her incomparable little prose-poem, _The Nemesis
of Motherhood_, pictures one of the other mothers, a vacuous, trifling
woman, who utters the soul-cry, when she began to wake to her real self,
as the little firstborn nestled in her bosom. “Do you suppose he knows I
am his mother?” and the little head had snuggled into place. She gazed
at him in a bewildered wonder; something seemed to be taking hold of her
heartstrings. “Oh: this scrap of a creature was part of her life itself;
she had made him; she had struck this spark of a soul into a being; the
idea; the dear thing had a soul of course! And she fell to wondering what
kind of a soul it was. What kind of a soul? Why didn’t people say the son
was the avatar of the mother? A soul like hers to be sure. Heaven help
her, what kind of a soul _was_ hers? She saw herself. That was the kind
of a soul she had, a little paltering, worthless one, and that was what
she had given to her boy.”
Oh the sorrow of such motherhood! Sorrow for herself, more sorrow for her
children, and most sorrow for the great wide world, into which her child
has come to take a part—and which must of necessity be a sorrowful part,
unless he be regenerated. And even then the superlative of sadness is
this, that he is not all he might have been had his progenitors given him
his lawful inheritance.
Mothers! mothers! choose and live for the highest and noblest in
yourselves, and for your children. Bless the world with your offspring.
Crown them with your pure and noble life, and your memory shall be
blessed.