GETTING UP
Everybody should stay at home and away from the mother and her new born child until after the seventh day, and then, if our patient is normal, visitors may call, but should not stay longer than five minutes. The convalescing mother will improve faster without the neighborhood gossip, or the tales of woe so often carried by well-meaning, but woefully ignorant acquaintances.
When the hard ball-like mass can no longer be felt in the lower abdomen, when the lochia has passed through the three changes already mentioned, and the flow is whitish or yellowish, scanty and odorless, the patient may sit up in a chair increasingly each day. Such conditions are usually found anywhere from the tenth to the fifteenth day. The patient first sits up a little in a chair—she has already been exercising some in bed—and this enables her to sit up with ease for a half-hour the first day, increasing one-half hour each day during the week following. At the end of three weeks, she may be taken down stairs providing there is ample help to carry her back up stairs. After another week (at the close of the fourth), if the lochia is entirely white or yellow, with no blood, she may begin carefully to go about the house. There should be no lifting, shoving, pulling, wringing, sweeping, washing, ironing, or other heavy exercise for at least another two weeks, better four weeks. Any variance from this program usually means backache, lassitude, diminished milk supply, and frequently a general invalidism for weeks or months—sometimes years.