WHEN THE BABY IS BORN.
At the end of about 280 days after the conception, or what under ordinary conditions would have been the tenth menstrual period, the days are completed and the expectant mother is usually delivered of her child. The day when the indications are that the child is to be born is always one of great anxiety, but need not be one of apprehension or fear. Where the laws of health have been observed there is no cause for apprehension. With the birth of the first child the labor is oftentimes somewhat more prolonged and attended with more pain, but the after-pains are usually not considerable. Generally the pains which precede the birth diminish with each succeeding confinement, but the after-pains increase in a similar manner.
Where the mother has made intelligent preparation for this great event, the child may be, and generally is, born without the actual assistance of the doctor. An intelligent nurse would be in position to render every needed assistance, but the presence of a well-equipped physician always brings such added ease to the mind of the mother, by removing all unnecessary risks, that it is always desirable that the physician should have been apprised in advance, notified promptly, and be on hand as soon as possible after the labor-pains commence. This is especially important when it is the first child.
If the labor should be short and the birth take place before the arrival of the physician, the nurse or attendant should be careful to see that the cord is not wound about the neck of the child, but placed free, and the child with its head in position so that it can breathe naturally, and with its body warmly covered.
When the pulsing in the cord has ceased and the child has cried vigorously, any nurse who has been present at previous confinements, who is intelligent and capable, would be able to sever the cord after having made the necessary bindings upon it. Indeed, some authorities contend that when the pulsing has ceased the cord may be severed without any tying of the ends at all.
Dr. Alice B. Stockham, in "Tokology," makes the following sensible suggestions: "Usually, as the child is ushered into the world, it sets up a lusty cry, indicating that respiration is established. Crying is not essential, as some authors claim, and the prompt covering usually causes it to desist. If it does not breathe at once, a little brisk patting on the breast and thigh may establish respiration. If this is not effectual, dash cold water in the face and on the chest. Still failing, artificial respiration must be established. To do this, close the nostrils with two fingers, blow into the mouth, and then expel the air from the lungs by a gentle pressure upon the chest. Continue this as long as any hope of life remains.
"Sever the cord when pulsation has entirely ceased. Use a dull pair of scissors, cutting about two inches from the child's navel. Following these directions, no tying is essential."
Tying is done in order to prevent excessive bleeding; but whether to tie the ends of the severed placentic cord, or not, is a matter which should be left wholly to the attendant doctor. It is well for the young husband to be intelligent and well-read along these and kindred lines, but if he employs a physician he should accept the physician's judgment and have his instructions followed. If he is not satisfied with the doctor whom he has employed, but sees fit to change for one whose opinions harmonize more closely with his own, that is a matter for the husband's own judgment, but the physician who is employed should always be supreme and left without interference or dictation. The doctor in charge must have absolute control in a lying-in room. He should direct, and not be dictated to.
If the husband is intelligent, enters into the sympathies of his wife, and has her confidence, if the physician consents, as he doubtless will, it seems quite natural that he should desire to be present with his wife in this trying experience of her life. If he understands the nature of the experience through which she is called upon to pass, his sympathy will be helpful to his wife, and if nature has endowed him with any of the qualifications of a good nurse, he can be of assistance to the doctor. Where the husband is without intelligence, is nervous, and exerts a depressing influence upon his wife, his absence may be more helpful than his presence. If the husband is intelligent and sympathetic, it seems to us that he could not but desire to be with his wife; but where he is wholly disqualified, his physician should not hesitate to express his judgment and preference in this matter.
The presence of a physician is always to be preferred, in order to determine the presentation, sever the cord, and look carefully after the afterbirth. The normal presentation is of the head foremost.
Where the inexperienced young husband is in an extremity, and finds himself alone at the hour of delivery, he should expect, as is most likely, that everything will move along normally, and he needs to be especially guarded only upon three points. When the head is born, see that the navel cord is not twisted around the child's neck. If this should be the case, it can easily be slightly loosened and then slipped over the child's head; otherwise the pressure of this tightened ligature would prevent its breathing and would result in strangulation. In an extreme case the cord could easily be tied in two places, a couple of inches apart, and cut between them. This should be done by an experienced person only, and as a last resort. After the child is born, the next and last important thing is the coming away of the placenta, or afterbirth. This often occurs at the end of twenty minutes or a half hour, or may be longer delayed. In the meantime the mother should be warmly covered, and any drink given her should not be either extremely hot or extremely cold. The afterbirth should be kept in a vessel prepared for it until the doctor has inspected it, so that he may know whether all the parts have come away or not. If any part remains, it might cause serious trouble.
These things successfully accomplished, the bathing of the child and care of the mother are next in order. How soon these should be undertaken would have to be determined by conditions. With the mother, a period of rest is sometimes very desirable. When bathing her body, or changing her bed, the greatest care should be exercised to protect her from the danger of contracting cold. During these hours her physical nature undergoes a great revolution, and exposure at this time might entail permanent results of a serious character. Fevers, bealed breasts, the aches, pains and perils which so often accompany and follow confinement, are almost wholly due to lack of proper care at this period.
If the young husband is intelligent and desires the comfort and well-being of his wife he will see that for a sufficient period she is protected against callers, and even the visits of friends. She is weak and needs absolute rest. She needs at least several days or more before she should be visited. If callers are allowed in her room, they are liable to remain too long. If you lack the nerve to decline callers the privilege they may expect, then ask your physician to order that no one see her at present.
The comfort, safety and well-being of the wife renders the selection of a good nurse a matter of as great importance as the choice of a good physician. In this matter the doctor is oftentimes the best counselor. He is constantly coming in contact with those who are in charge, where he is in attendance, and his suggestions ought to be most valuable. It is of the utmost importance that she should be a woman of pure blood; and for this a good moral character is the best guarantee. It is not wise to suppose that, since she is to remain but for a few weeks, the question of character is of no moment, for, without any outward evidences to arouse suspicion, she might bring with her, and by kissing and in other ways communicate to the child the results of venereal and other diseases which might entail, from this unsuspected source, consequences from which years could not bring subsequent relief.
Medical authorities assert that at least six weeks are required after childbirth before the womb assumes its natural size and position. An eminent physician, writing in the New York Medical Journal, says: "I have watched this very carefully in a number of women, and have seen in the perfectly clean womb of a non-nursing mother involution delayed as late as the third month."
It is perfectly safe to say that parents will make no mistake by observing the requirement of the Levitical teaching upon this subject.
After confinement or miscarriage, marital relations should be wholly omitted for a period. Upon this point the sanitary regulations of the Mosaic economy were very explicit. In the twelfth chapter of Leviticus instruction is given that after the birth of a male child at least forty days should elapse, and after the birth of a female, or maid child, at least eighty days should be permitted to elapse. Just why there should be this difference in time, six weeks after the birth of a male child and three months after the birth of a female child, seems not to be clearly understood either by theologians or medical authorities. When we know that this is intended and enjoined, we can rest assured that there are good and sufficient reasons, whether they be physical, social, sanitary or political.
No thoughtful or considerate husband would desire to impose upon his wife such exactions as would result in her certain discomfort, and possibly in such permanent physical injuries as are quite sure to follow.
One of the medical journals recently contained an incident narrated by a physician who had attended a woman in five different confinements. In each instance the physician noticed that about the seventh or eighth day the temperature of the patient indicated some unusual physical disturbance or irregularity. In the last confinement, when the physician called to mind similar conditions during previous periods of convalescence, he decided to discover the cause, and, by questioning the patient very critically, learned that the guilty husband was the occasion of his wife's trouble. While such occurrences are shameful in the highest degree, yet it is possible that such gross conduct is the occasion of many relapses upon the part of convalescing mothers, and to this it is probable that many deaths may easily be attributable.
That some husbands are brutal in this respect, we need but simply to name that an eminent physician of Philadelphia has stated that a legal friend had told him that he had procured a divorce within two years from her marriage for a wife whose charges of cruelty were sustained by the evidence that three days after her confinement her husband had driven the nurse out of his wife's room in order that he might make this cruel exaction of her.
After the little stranger is safely landed, bathed, dressed, and has had a sufficient period of rest, the matter of nourishment is likely to come up for consideration. The food which nature has provided is best suited to the physical requirements of the child, and is found in the mother's breasts. The earliest secretions of her breast constitute what is called colostrum, and is purgative in character, designed to cleanse the child's bowels of the meconium, or tar-like substance, with which they are filled previous to birth. Other food should never be substituted until failure has resulted in an honest, serious effort to conform to nature's purpose. If for any reason the child cannot obtain the nourishment which should be provided by the mother, it needs very little food until the third day.
If the serious results attendant upon artificial food and the provision of wet-nurses were fully understood, the terrible consequences which come to both the children and their parents, as the result of such courses, would be studiously avoided. The desire to escape the nursing and care of children, so as early to return to the rounds of social duties and marital excesses, is a great mistake. The well-being of the mother, as well as of the child, is dependent upon the fulfillment of the natural obligations which are inseparable from the relation of motherhood.
In large cities there are women who lead dissolute lives, put away their own children, and then rent themselves out as wet-nurses. When interviewed they tell plausible stories, and ingratiate themselves sometimes into good families, to render the double service of nurse and artificial mother. Many of these women are not only devoid of moral character, but bring to the child the degenerating influences which are inseparable from the vice and impurity which is a part of their own being. Not infrequently these women bring with them the after-effects of gonorrhea and syphilis, and the innocent child, which is entitled to the nourishment from the body of its own mother, is subjected by unthinking parents to the necessity of feeding at fountains which flow with corruption, disease and death.
It is on this very account that the children of the middle and even lower classes are generally stronger physically, intellectually and morally, than the children of those whose wealth and inclination incline them to dissipation and excess, to late hours and rich food, and who from simple preference subject their children to artificial food, or to the dangers and diseases which are so often brought into the home by a wet-nurse and vicious nurse-girls.
Fatherhood, no less than motherhood, has its duties and its pleasures. It is not only the father's duty, but it ought also to be his pleasure, to look after his own children. Some husbands speak of "the baby" as though it belonged wholly to the wife, and not to them. The thought of caring for or tending the child seems to be as foreign to their minds as though it were a child adopted by their wives from a foundling asylum.
It is not only the privilege, but the honor of the father to be found enjoying the pleasure and satisfaction of holding and caring for his children at proper times and intervals of leisure.
One of the prettiest pictures of home life is a painting in one of the galleries of Europe of the king of Belgium, upon his hands and knees upon the floor of the nursery, playing horse with his own royal children.
Some men seem to act as though it were a disgrace for them to carry their own children through the streets, or push the baby carriage when accompanied by their own wives. Every person has seen some strong, stalwart father, with weak character, walking by the side of a delicate, nervous wife, who is weak and faint because of the burden of carrying a child which belongs as much to the father as to the mother. Before they were married this same man would not allow the delicate darling by his side to carry her parasol; but now that they are married she is permitted to carry a child that weighs ten or twenty pounds, or even more, for great distances, because of the false pride of her unthoughtful husband.
We once knew a pastor of a prominent city church who lived adjacent to a small park where he was accustomed, at times, to sit in the shade and read. After a baby came into their home, being a sensible man, he found pleasure in giving some time and attention to his child; used sometimes to wheel it through the park in a baby carriage, or have the carriage stand near him while he sat and read. His home was not without a sufficient number of helpers, and one of his parishioners ventured one day to suggest that it was not becoming to take the baby with him when he went into the park to read; but the sensible father resented not only the insult which was offered to him personally, but to universal fatherhood, by replying that it was his baby, and he would do with it as he pleased.
The presence of a baby is a blessing in any home. It is a blessing to the father as well as to the mother. Some men are not good fathers, the same as some women are not the best of mothers; but any thoughtful husband will concede the fact that a proper apprehension of the relation which he sustains to the baby that is born in his home calls for a recognition of the privileges and obligations of a father to himself, to his child, and to his wife as well. What his home is, what his children are to become, will depend as much, and possibly more, upon what he is and does, than upon the little woman whose time, talent and strength are already taxed to their utmost by the various and constant demands which she must hourly meet.
Part III
CONCERNING HIS CHILDREN