GENERAL SUGGESTIONS
The choice of material demands some thought and attention. As a rule, baby's clothing materials should be light in weight, good moisture absorbers, and at the same time able to retain the body heat. Most layettes have the common fault of being prematurely outgrown; and so it is well to allow for ample growth in making baby's first clothes. Since the principal object of clothing is to insure a uniform body temperature, it is important that the mother be constantly on her guard to keep the baby cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter.
The mothers of various races and nations have their own ideas concerning the clothing of their babies. One mother will wrap her baby in cotton, which is held in place by means of a roller bandage, and as you visit this home during the first week of baby's life, you will be handed a little mummy-shaped creature—straight as a little poker—all wrapped up in cotton and a roller bandage. The surprising feature is that the baby does not seem to complain.
In another district of the city we find the baby dressed in starched clothes, ribbon sashes, bright ribbon bows on its arms and around its neck. At first glance you wonder if the little child is not many years older and is about to make a visit to a county fair, but on inquiry we find that he has only been prepared for the event of circumcision on the eighth day.
And if you go into the forest of primeval days you will find another mother bandaging her baby to a board, head and all, and he seems to live and thrive in his little woven nest strapped on the back of his Indian mother.
Other babies in the warmer portions of the earth have almost less than nothing on, and are left to be swung by the breezes in little baskets tied to the boughs of trees; being taken up only when it is time to feed.