RULES FOR THE BOTTLE-FED
1. Never play with a baby during or right after a meal.
2. Lay the baby on his side when nursing the bottle.
3. Three full hours should intervene between feedings.
4. Don't give the food too hot—it should just be warm.
5. Make the test for warmth on the inner side of your arm.
6. Give a drink of water between each meal if awake.
7. Never save the left-overs for baby.
8. If possible, give three feedings each day in the cool air, with baby comfortably warm.
9. Do not jump, bounce, pat, or rock baby during or after meals.
10. Never coax baby to take more than he wants, or needs.
11. No solid foods are given the first year.
12. Orange juice may be given at six months; while, after four months, unsweetened prune juice is better than medicine for the bowels.
CHAPTER XVII
MILK SANITATION
Cow's milk, like mother's milk, is made up of solids and water. In a previous chapter we learned that in one-hundred parts of mother's milk, eighty-seven parts were water and thirteen parts were solid. These thirteen parts of solids consist of sugar, proteins, and salts; this is likewise the case with cow's milk, except that in the case of the cow's milk, the sugar is decreased while the proteins are increased as will be noted by the accompanying comparative analysis:
| Fat | % 4.00 |
| Sugar | 7.00 |
| Proteins | 1.50 |
| Salts | 0.20 |
| Water | 87.30 |
| ——— | |
| % 100.00 |
| Fat | % 4.00 |
| Sugar | 4.50 |
| Proteins | 3.50 |
| Salts | 0.75 |
| Water | 87.25 |
| ——— | |
| % 100.00 |
Mother's milk is absolutely sterile, that is, free from the presence of germs; on the other hand, cow's milk is anything but sterile—the moment it leaves the udder it begins to accumulate numerous bacteria, all of which multiply very rapidly. Cow's milk is generally twenty-four to forty-eight hours old before it can possibly reach the baby. It is just as important to keep in mind these facts of milk contamination—dirt, filth, flies, and bacteria—as it is to plan for the modification of cow's milk for the purpose of making it more nearly resemble mother's milk. While mother's milk has about the same percentage of fat as cow's milk, it is almost twice as rich in sugar, and has only one-fourth to one-third as much protein. This protein is vastly different from that found in cow's milk, which you recall has a tough curd, as seen in cottage cheese. While mother's milk contains a small amount of casein similar to that found in the cheese of the cow's milk, the principal protein constituent is of another kind (lactalbumin), and is much more easy of digestion than the casein of cow's milk.
This is a most important point to remember, because the baby's stomach is not at first adapted to the digestion of the heavier and tougher protein curds of cow's milk. It requires time to accustom the infant stomach to perform this heavier work of digestion. There are a number of factors which must be borne in mind in the modification of milk, whether it be cow's milk, or goat's milk (for many European physicians use goat's milk entirely in the artificial feeding of infants): namely, the cleanliness of the milk, the acidity of milk, the difference in the curd, the percentage of sugar, and the presence of bacteria.