CHAPTER XVIII.

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.