Better babies and their care E-Book

Richardson

• Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 250

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Better Babies and Their Care is a comprehensive early 20th-century guide dedicated to the health, development, and well-being of infants and young children. Authored by Anna Steese Richardson and John A. Foote, this book was originally published as part of the Better Babies movement, which sought to educate parents and caregivers on the best practices for raising healthy children. The book covers a wide range of topics, including prenatal care, proper nutrition, hygiene, clothing, sleep routines, and the importance of fresh air and exercise. It emphasizes the significance of scientific child-rearing methods, offering practical advice on feeding schedules, bathing, and the prevention of common childhood illnesses. The authors also address the emotional and psychological needs of babies, advocating for a nurturing and attentive approach to parenting. With its accessible language and detailed instructions, Better Babies and Their Care serves as both a manual and a source of encouragement for mothers and families striving to give their children the best possible start in life. The book reflects the values and medical knowledge of its time, providing a fascinating historical perspective on child care and the evolution of parenting practices.

Leseprobe

BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE

PREFACE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I PREPARATION FOR MOTHERHOOD

CHAPTER II BABY’S BIRTHDAY

CHAPTER III THE NURSING BABY

CHAPTER IV ARTIFICIAL FEEDING

CHAPTER V FORMULAS FOR ARTIFICIAL FOODS

CHAPTER VI GUARDING THE BABY’S DIGESTION

CHAPTER VII TEETHING AND WEANING

CHAPTER VIII CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH

CHAPTER IX FRESH AIR AND SLEEP AS HEALTH PRODUCERS

CHAPTER X HOW THE NORMAL BABY GROWS

CHAPTER XI BABY-COMFORT THROUGH CLOTHES

CHAPTER XII DEFECTS AND HABITS

CHAPTER XIII BABY’S AILMENTS AND HOW TO TREAT THEM

CHAPTER XIV NURSERY EMERGENCIES

CHAPTER XV DIET FOR OLDER CHILDREN

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BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE

BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE

BYANNA STEESE RICHARDSONNATIONAL CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE, CONGRESS OF MOTHERS AND PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATIONS

NEW YORKFREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1914, byFrederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages SECOND PRINTING

TO THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND BABIES THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MOTHERS THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND HELPERS WHO HAVE TAKEN PART IN BETTER BABIES CONTESTS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A MOTHER WHO KNOWS WHAT BETTER BABIES, BETTER MOTHERS, BETTER HELPERS MEAN TO THIS AND FUTURE GENERATIONS

PREFACE

It was in January, 1913, that the Woman’s Home Companion sent Anna Steese Richardson to Denver, Colorado, to report a Baby Health Contest held in connection with the National Western Live Stock Exposition. There she found babies being examined for physical and mental development, and scored for points by standards of weights and measurements very much as live stock is scored at agricultural fairs.

Mrs. Richardson’s journalistic instinct told her that here was a big constructive work, at its very beginning, and that its spectacular possibilities would make attractive “copy” for a magazine. But before she left Denver for New York she had begun to think of something much bigger and more important than what the babies could do for the magazine, and that was what the magazine could do for the cause of better babies.

As a result of this trip, the Woman’s Home Companion adopted as its own special charge the work now known all over the world as the Better Babies campaign. This has quickly become a widespread movement for education in parenthood. Pride of parenthood brings fathers and mothers to the Better Babies Contests. Parental love holds them there to watch their babies examined by physicians and to learn how the condition of their children can be improved by intelligent care and feeding and sanitary environment.

The results are so far-reaching that one hesitates to put them into words, for fear they may seem overstated. After a little more than one year of hard work, the Better Babies Bureau of the Woman’s Home Companion, under the directorship of Anna Steese Richardson, has become a tremendous machine for aiding in the reduction of infant mortality, and for raising physical, mental, and moral standards among children.

Naturally, the starting-point for much of this work has been the fair—state, county, and local. These widely advertised contests have been a sort of blare of trumpets to attract attention. But above and beyond this element has been the quiet and persistent growth of the work among board-of-health officers, medical societies, club women, church organizations, physicians, nurses—in fact, among all bodies of men and women especially interested in child welfare. The fostering and furthering of this work, which has progressed beyond all expectations, has been Mrs. Richardson’s chief joy and pride during a year of almost unbelievable endeavor.

The author of this book is a keenly interested and intelligent observer. While she has gathered into the book much that is of real scientific value, contributed by physicians, nurses, psychologists, and social workers, still the chief usefulness of the volume, it seems to me, lies in the fact that it is a message from one mother to other mothers, and is written in the language that all mothers can understand.

The woman who writes it has had not only the actual experience of bearing and rearing her own children, but she has had the rare privilege of corresponding with mothers from every point in the United States, of witnessing many of the Better Babies Contests, and of studying not only what is the matter with the sick baby, but why the well baby is well.

Gertrude B. LaneEditor, Woman’s Home Companion.

March 26th, 1914.

CONTENTS

PAGE

DEDICATION

v

PREFACE

vii

CHAPTER I

PREPARATION FOR MOTHERHOOD

1

Motherhood a Profession which Requires Training—Prenatal Influence and Hygiene—Maternity Clothes

CHAPTER II

BABY’S BIRTHDAY

20

Choosing the Nurse and Doctor—Sanitary Bedroom and Its Equipment—The Baby’s Layette—Prevention of Blindness in New-Born Babies—The Baby’s First Bath

CHAPTER III

THE NURSING BABY

36

The Nursing Baby—Why Three Hundred Thousand Babies Are Sacrificed Every Year to Ignorance—Influence of the Mother’s Diet on the Baby’s Health—When the New-Born Baby Must Be Bottle-Fed—A Well-Balanced Diet for the Nursing Mother—Care of the Breasts and Nipples—Importance of Regularity in Nursing

CHAPTER IV

ARTIFICIAL FEEDING

50

When Artificial Feeding Is Necessary—Weight the Test of Proper Nourishment—Cow’s Milk, Carefully Modified, Is the Best Substitute for Mother’s Milk—Source of Supply and Care—Care of the Bottles and Nipples

CHAPTER V

FORMULAS FOR ARTIFICIAL FOODS

65

Formulas for Modifying Milk—Milk Sugar, Cane Sugar, or Malt Sugar—How To Tell When the Baby Is Properly Nourished—Lime Water in the Milk—Condensed Milk—Patent Foods

CHAPTER VI

GUARDING THE BABY’S DIGESTION

79

Strong Digestion Means a Strong Baby—Bowel Conditions Tell the Story—The Underfed and the Overfed Baby—Symptoms of Disorder in the Digestive System—Vomiting—Colic and Constipation—Diarrhea and Its Treatment

CHAPTER VII

TEETHING AND WEANING

97

Teething a Natural Process—Putting the Baby in Shape to Teethe Easily—Dentition Table—Care of the First Teeth—Gradual Weaning is Simple Process—Alternate Breast and Bottle Feeding—Evils of Delayed Weaning—Diet Tables for Children from Nine Months to Thirty-six Months

CHAPTER VIII

CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH

112

How To Give the Baby’s Bath—Care of the Various Organs—Thrush and Its Treatment—Special Baths for Delicate Children—Habits of Cleanliness

CHAPTER IX

FRESH AIR AND SLEEP AS HEALTH PRODUCERS

126

Heating and Ventilating the Nursery—Outdoor Naps—Sleeping Hours for the Normal Baby—Why Some Babies Do Not Sleep

CHAPTER X

HOW THE NORMAL BABY GROWS

137

What Should Your Baby Weigh and Measure?—Testing the Baby’s Mental Development—How Soon Should the Baby Walk and Talk?—Crying, Cause And Cure

CHAPTER XI

BABY-COMFORT THROUGH CLOTHES

151

Tight Belly-Bands May Torture Babies—Underwear that Does Not Irritate—Extension Skirts To Protect the Feet—Dressing the Baby in Hot Weather—How To Handle the Baby

CHAPTER XII

DEFECTS AND HABITS

168

Taking Defects in Time—Habits that Make Children Ugly—Finger-Sucking and Nail-Biting—Bed-Wetting—Vicious Habits and Their Cure—Nervousness and Its Treatment—The Habit of Happiness

CHAPTER XIII

BABY’S AILMENTS AND HOW TO TREAT THEM

182

Mothers Now Studying Preventive Medicine—Remedies Which Should Be Found in Every Nursery—Treatment of Diarrhea and Constipation—Colds and Their Cure—Adenoids and Their Removal—Ailments of the Skin

CHAPTER XIV

NURSERY EMERGENCIES

202

Contagious Diseases: Symptoms, Treatment and Quarantine—Croup and Its Treatment—Convulsions—When Falls Are Dangerous—Burns and Cuts—Poisons and Their Antidotes

CHAPTER XV

DIET FOR OLDER CHILDREN

224

Milk for Growing Children—Eggs, Meat and Fish—Breadstuffs and Cereals—Recipes for Nourishing Dishes

BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE

BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE

CHAPTER I PREPARATION FOR MOTHERHOOD

MOTHERHOOD A PROFESSION WHICH REQUIRES TRAINING—PRENATAL INFLUENCE AND HYGIENE—MATERNITY CLOTHES

Maternity is woman’s exclusive profession, the only one of which progress and science cannot rob her. It is also her highest profession, for, compared to motherhood, art and science dwindle into insignificance.

Successful motherhood, like genius in any art or profession, is founded on efficiency and joy in the chosen work, and the greater of these is joy. She who is merely efficient can reduce the mountains which rise in the pathway of the mother; joy in motherhood can remove them. For joy casts out doubt, fear, and all sense of burden. The woman who finds joy in maternity is absolute mistress of the domestic and social situation. Through it she commands the love and reverence of the husband to whose eyes she has opened the wonders and the mysteries of parenthood. For her the doors of the divorce court never yawn. For her motherhood entails no sacrifice. She has no regrets for a career cut short by marriage, because she finds in maternity the same supreme satisfaction of accomplishment which comes to the successful lawyer, financier, writer or artist.

Motherhood, like any other profession, requires preparation. For many generations the world has held that the maternal instinct and the ability to rear children were born in woman. It has been discovered that the maternal instinct, like many others, needs encouragement, while the ability to bring up children requires development or practical training. The phrase, “a born mother,” has rather fallen into disrepute. We are beginning to realize that one “born mother” in a thousand is not enough to leaven the maternal mass. And out of this discovery has risen a demand, which comes largely from women themselves, for education in motherhood, practical, sincere preparation for woman’s exclusive profession.

Perhaps the day will come when each college for women will have its endowed chair of motherhood, when the care and feeding of infants will be taught in our normal and high schools for girls. At present, certain colleges offer a course in psychology which prepares young women to guide, mentally and spiritually, the children they will some day bear. In a few city schools, particularly in the congested districts, girls are now taught how to bathe, dress and feed infants, largely for the purpose of having the message of sanitation and hygiene carried home to the tenement house mother.

Until these two forms of training for motherhood are combined, the American girl must enter the profession of maternity without the sort of practical preparation which will insure efficiency and joy in her chosen work. What knowledge she now possesses is a smattering of what her mother has learned by experience, what the family physician imparts at odd moments, what she reads in books or magazine articles, and what she hears at lectures where a few valiant souls proclaim motherhood as a profession which requires the most thorough of training.

Preparation for motherhood must rise above the practical instruction in the care and feeding of infants which leads to efficiency. It requires a certain mental and spiritual adjustment of the woman to the environment and conditions of maternity. She who is obsessed by the fear of physical suffering which motherhood may entail, who regards the coming of a child as the end of her individual career, her social life, her personal pleasures, will be neither efficient nor joyous. Fear and doubt come between her and success. They even threaten her health.

Therefore, the first step in preparation for motherhood is the firm belief that it is a privilege, not a duty; a joy, not a sacrifice; an investment that will pay big dividends. Thus armored, the prospective mother enters upon the nine months of pregnancy insured against anxiety and ill-health. The joy she finds in carrying her child provides a splendid foundation for the child’s health. The woman who frets brings forth a nervous child. The woman who rebels generally bears a morbid child.

Science wrangles over the rival importance of heredity and environment, but we women know what effects prenatal influence works in children. And, knowing this, what a mystery that we do not mold each thought and act in the interest of the children whose up-bringing will be our real life-work! How strange that mothers do not realize that the burden of maternal and domestic duties can be lightened by prenatal care and character molding.

Science has done much for the modern mother. It has lessened the danger and the pains of childbirth. The once dreaded child-bed fever is now practically unknown. Disinfectants and sanitary care have reduced this danger to a minimum. Anæsthetics have reduced the strain and pain of labor. Physicians no longer withhold the anæsthetic until the hour when instruments or an operation make its use necessary; through the later stages of ordinary labor, the modern physician offers the alleviation of chloroform, and the mother comes through the ordeal with one-fourth the pain endured by her mother and grandmother.

Modern ingenuity also designs many comforts for the prospective mother, not the least of which is maternity raiment, including corsets and adjustable gowns. Why do not women avail themselves of all these aids? Largely because they are not educated for motherhood.

Medical science, through sanitation and hygiene, has lightened the mother’s burden in rearing her baby. It has proved beyond doubt that the child raised under sanitary and hygienic conditions, fed, bathed and clothed properly and trained to regular habits, can escape most of the ailments which were once counted as almost normal manifestations of the child’s growth.

Many of us can recall the day when a colicky baby was considered a dispensation of Providence, not a proof of maternal ignorance or carelessness; when convulsions during teething were regarded as “natural”; when “summer complaint” was accepted as a normal feature of baby’s second summer; when children were actually exposed to whooping-cough, measles and chicken-pox, so they would have these juvenile ailments and be done with them!

To-day, unless a baby is born with some inherited weakness or chronic disease, science teaches how to protect the child from ordinary ailments—colic, convulsions, summer complaint, and contagious diseases. This is the day of preventive medicine, particularly in the care of infants. Prevention lightens the burden of motherhood. When young women are trained to ward off illness in children, not to nurse them through illness, motherhood will mean what it should mean to women—Joy.

Start your maternal career right by preparing your body and your mind for motherhood. Start your baby right in life by studying sanitation, hygiene, the care and feeding of infants. Know your business as a mother, and motherhood will have no terrors for you.

Remember that your own physical condition and the health of the baby you will bring into the world depend largely upon your mental attitude. Cast out all fear of childbirth and all dread of maternal duties and sacrifices. Fretting, grieving, or rebellion will not purchase immunity from maternal duties. Rather it will increase them. 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 pregnancy. Self-control, cheerfulness and love for the little life breathing in unison with your own will practically insure you a child of normal physique and nerves.

Physicians and scientists may regard stories of prenatal influence which float through open nursery doors as “old women’s tales”; but we women who have borne children know the price babies pay for maternal self-indulgence, mental abnormalities, bitterness, hysteria.

I recall one woman of my acquaintance whose self-consciousness amounted to an affliction. She was super-sensitive, self-effacing, apologetic, always afraid that she was not wanted. One day when speaking of her futile efforts to correct the tendency, she explained that she had been an unwelcome child. Her mother had rebelled throughout the period of pregnancy. She had nursed her child in bitterness of spirit. Later in life she learned to cling to her daughter for companionship as well as material care, but the girl never outgrew those unfortunate prenatal influences.

Another girl, sixth in the family, was carried and nursed by her mother through times of financial stress, when one more mouth to fill was a hardship. As soon as the child could toddle, she developed a passion for running away. She grew up absolutely devoid of family instinct, filial affection and womanly sense of responsibility. While very young, she eloped with her first suitor, rather than remain under the parental roof. She was never dishonest or immoral, but she was born hating her home and indifferent to her parents.

Still sadder is the case of a mother who gave way to hysteria and hideous paroxysms of anger throughout the period of pregnancy. Though physically sound herself and married to a man without taint, this woman brought into the world a child who never developed mentally beyond her second year. To-day this mother, now a self-supporting widow, never leaves the institute for feeble-minded children, where her daughter is safest and happiest, without the throbbing thought, “Why did no one warn me of what I was doing to my child?”

On the other hand, when maternity is accepted as a privilege, and love instead of bitterness reigns in the prospective mother’s heart, the babe is born tranquil, normal, healthy. Returning to the phrase, efficiency in motherhood, it is good business to bear normal children.

In this day, the woman who frets, rebels and weeps during pregnancy commands little sympathy and practical help from her husband and family. But there is something fine and inspiring about the woman who firmly, cheerfully demands for herself and the child she is carrying the best that domestic conditions and environment afford. She becomes an heroic figure, fulfilling her highest duty to society, and demanding just toll. Men bow to this attitude when they flee hysterics and turn deaf ears to angry complaints. And no woman should disregard the importance of moral support and sympathy on the part of her husband.

To guard her own health and that of the child, the expectant mother must give careful attention to three things: diet, rest, exercise.

Upon the diet will depend largely the proper nourishment of two lives instead of one. Each woman is a law unto herself in diet, and should make an earnest study of her food-needs and the effect of foods upon her digestive and nervous system. No cut-and-dried diet can be prescribed for the pregnant woman, because what agrees with one woman may disagree with another.

Generally speaking, however, the diet should include a large proportion of liquids, fresh fruits and vegetables, with a small proportion of meats and practically no rich or highly spiced desserts. Excesses of any sort should be avoided.

Liquid food is important because it encourages the system to throw off impurities through the bowels, kidneys and skin. From two to three quarts of liquid should be drunk daily, particularly cool, pure water. An excellent plan is to drink one glass at rising, two between breakfast and dinner, two more between dinner and supper, and one before retiring—six in all. Water should not be drunk with meals. Milk, cocoa, chocolate, clear broths and buttermilk are excellent beverages, but both tea and coffee should be taken sparingly, and alcoholic drinks should be avoided. Nothing will be gained by forcing yourself to drink any of these liquids if they nauseate you or fail to digest easily. If milk, the most important of beverages to the expectant mother, is palatable but causes constipation, laxative foods can be used to correct this tendency.

Meat should be eaten once a day. Poultry and lamb are given the preference by dietitians. Beef is better than veal; pork is difficult to digest under any condition; and meat stewed until tender in a milk or cream sauce is more easily digested than fried meat. Smoked meat is not particularly nourishing to mother or child, but crisp ham and bacon are useful in whetting a failing appetite. Fish, oysters, and eggs may be used to vary the diet, but they do not replace meat.

Fruits and vegetables should be eaten freely. Fresh fruits, including apples, peaches, pears, oranges, grapes, shredded pineapple, grape-fruit, plums, strawberries, raspberries, and huckleberries, should be used regularly in season. When they are not to be had, stewed fruits—apples, prunes, rhubarb, peaches, figs, etc.—may be substituted. When dried fruits are used, they must be soaked well and cooked thoroughly.

The most desirable vegetables are young onions, asparagus, peas, potatoes, lima and string beans, carrots, spinach, celery, lettuce and romaine. Heavier vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, baked beans, beets, turnips and radishes are not so easily digested and should be eaten sparingly.

Salads made with olive oil dressing are an important item in the diet of the prospective mother. Many dietitians urge that fresh salad be eaten at least once a day.

Particular attention must be paid to the effect of cooked and prepared cereals on the digestion. Some women do not digest the heavier cereals, like oatmeal, cracked wheat, cornmeal, while patent foods of a lighter nature agree with them. In this case, the mother who “hates cereals” will do well to try some of the light patented foods, with cream and sugar or fruit, and train herself gradually to enjoy a cereal course with at least one meal a day. The coarser breads, such as whole wheat, graham, cornmeal and bran, are recommended for prospective mothers who suffer from constipation, indigestion or heartburn.

The woman who feels an inordinate craving for certain articles of diet, such as pickles, lemons, candy, etc., should exercise judgment and self-control. Like any other habit, extremes in diet will grow upon a woman until they really endanger her health. Their indulgence will in no way lighten the burdens of pregnancy. Considerable acid is supplied in salads and fruits; and a limited amount of sweet pickle, catsups and other modern condiments may be taken with meals.

Custards, gelatines, sponge cake, light desserts made with fruit, and ice-cream are desirable sweets.

Rest and normal sleep, alternating with healthful exercise which does not exhaust the system, are vitally important to both mother and child. Eight hours’ sleep each night is a good average, and to insure normal sleep the prospective mother should be made as comfortable as possible.

I have known mothers who, at this time, suffered torture if they shared a bed or even a room with other members of their family, and yet they denied themselves the important privilege of privacy. The expectant mother should sleep in the environment and atmosphere most conducive to perfect rest. Her bedding should be light but warm in cold weather. The room should be properly ventilated, with the window open top and bottom. No gas jet or lamp should burn in this room during the night. In cold weather a very simple way to insure comfort and prompt dropping off to sleep is to lay a hot water bag, covered with flannel, between the sheets. The pregnant woman should never suffer from chill or dampness.

The mental attitude of the expectant mother just before retiring is an important factor in insuring sleep. Family disputes, even discussions on impersonal problems, should be avoided. The woman engaged in a wordy argument on religion, politics, or any social question may go to bed so excited that she will go over and over the discussion when, for the sake of herself and her unborn child, she should be sleeping.

Neither should she go to bed hungry. A glass of milk, warm if it can be taken that way, cocoa, broth or gruel is a sleep coaxer, but no tea, coffee, or any other stimulant should be drunk just before bedtime.

In addition to regular sleep at night, the prospective mother should have at least one nap during the day, at a time which will least interfere with her household duties. A mother who has borne six children, who has had little domestic help, and who yet retains her youthful look and energy, has often told me that she thinks her present condition due to the fact that while carrying and nursing her babies she never permitted herself to reach that stage of exhaustion where her nerves twitched, her voice shrilled, and she became irritable. She made it a practice to drop her work when these symptoms appeared, and to seek the sanctuary of a quiet room apart from her family, if only for ten or fifteen minutes. And, most important, from the very start she trained her household to respect her right thus to draw apart.

Exercise for the pregnant woman should mean more than muscular activity. It should represent change of scene and thought, relaxation and recreation. The best form of exercise is walking for walking’s sake. This does not mean shopping or walking a few blocks to the home of a friend and then sitting down for a half hour or more of gossip. It means going out into God’s fresh air with one’s eyes open to the beauties of nature or the human drama through which the walk leads. On the other hand, the woman who has led a sedentary life should not walk too violently at first. Let her start with a half hour’s walk each day and increase it gradually until she spends at least two hours outdoors daily.

The woman who lives in a small city, a suburb, a country town, or on a farm, is singularly fortunate, as she will find light gardening the very best form of exercise.

In the side yard of a charming home where I often visit there is a flower-bed for each child born into the family circle. One year the mother laid out, planted and coaxed to bloom a border of lilies-of-the-valley; at another time she started her violet bed; a third child is represented by a wonderful circle of tulips and the fourth by an arbor of rambler roses. I often wonder whether the fine, flower-like natures of the girls in this family cannot be traced to the mother’s tranquil work in the garden.

Raising chickens, ducks, or pigeons will also take the expectant mother outdoors and provide pleasant recreation.

The woman who, through her girlhood, has been keen for athletic sports, such as tennis, golf, skating, and motoring, must curb these forms of recreation. Fully ninety per cent. of the physicians with whom I have discussed the question condemn constant motoring for the expectant mother. To employ the automobile as a transportation convenience is one thing; to take long, tiring rides or tours is positively dangerous for the pregnant woman, as it invites miscarriage.

Household duties exercise the muscles and are invaluable if performed in properly ventilated rooms. Unfortunately, however, many prospective mothers sacrifice their own health and that of their unborn children on the altar of domestic neatness. During pregnancy a woman should simplify her household management, even if this step involves packing away bric-à-brac and rolling up rugs.

This is no time for a woman to be self-sacrificing, and yet it often amounts to an obsession with her. I have seen such mothers performing heavy household duties, which other members of their family would gladly have assumed. I have seen them strain muscles and eyesight to embroider or trim raiment for the older children, and I have seen them carefully select the choicest bits of food at table for husband or growing child, when the mother should have, for her own health and that of her unborn child, the very best which the family purse can afford. This spirit of martyrdom may give a certain amount of mental satisfaction to the woman who practises it, but it is harmful to the unborn child and is really a symptom of mental disturbance not to be encouraged.

The actual physical comfort of the mother means much to the child. If there is any time when a woman has the right to allow herself time to care for her body, money to purchase easy clothes and small personal luxuries, it is when she is carrying a child. Bathing is a luxury which many overworked home-makers deny themselves. The expectant mother should make time to take a daily bath. If there is a stationary tub in the house, this bath may be of the sort which is most comforting to her: a tepid bath before retiring or a cool bath on rising. When there are no bath and plumbing in the house, the mother should have a portable tub in her room, in which she can sponge off quickly with tepid water, followed by brisk rubbing with a Turkish towel. A warm bath with soap should be taken twice a week, but very hot or very cold baths must be avoided. Bathing is important because it keeps the pores of the skin open. It is estimated that at least a pint of waste matter is thrown off each twenty-four hours through open pores. There is danger for mother and child if this waste matter is permitted to clog the former’s system.

The mission of maternity clothing is to make the mother comfortable. For that reason experts are beginning to design raiment that is both comforting