Good digestion is usually all that is essential for an abundant flow of milk. The food should be simple but nutritious. Depend upon grains and fruits mainly, and by no means exclude the bran from the wheat flour. The saline elements in the bran not only stimulate digestion, but excite the secretion of milk as well. Try the experiment of feeding an Alderney cow upon fine flour, excluding the bran. By the lack of milk you will prove that the bran contains elements pre-eminently stimulating to lacteal secretions.
Oysters eaten raw or slightly cooked are said to increase the flow of milk. Honey, too, often proves invaluable. With bread and gems, instead of the carbonaceous butter, eat honey. It stimulates all the secretions. It is evident that foods rich in phosphates are the best to increase lactiferous flow. Therefore, study well the food table in Chapter IX, and partake of foods which were avoided in pregnancy.
In the first days after confinement, if the milk is slow to secrete, apply bruised castor bean leaves.
For excessive flow of milk, once or twice a day use hot fomentations upon the breast, and apply cosmoline, in which there is a trace of camphor. Avoid salt and liquid food. Wear folds of cotton batting over the breast. In either insufficient or excessive flow of milk, guard against pressure of clothing. It is absolutely essential that the blood should circulate freely to and from the breasts.
(No one thing more frequently causes atrophied breasts in any woman than the pressure of corsets and padding ordinarily worn. It is not unusual for a fine development of the breast to result from the removal of all pressure, accompanied by bathing daily with cold water, and following the bath by friction. Should this fail, an apparatus on the principle of dry-cupping is used. This seldom fails of giving the desired results.)
After pains often accompany the contraction of the uterus. It is not true that women never have them with the first child and always have them subsequently. Like most of the sufferings of maternity, they are the effect of abnormal conditions. Women, who, in two or three confinements have suffered days with after pains, threatened with spasms and not relieved except by chloroform, have by previous preparation recovered without a twinge of pain.
After pains usually occur periodically every ten or fifteen minutes. They are cramp-like pains accompanied by a feeling as if pricked by many needles. They make one very impatient and nervous, depriving her of needed rest. They are often the result of poisonous doses of ergot taken during labor. The hot water bag or hot fomentations will usually give relief. Must be very hot and kept hot, consequently dry heat is to be preferred. Administering a hot sitz-bath is also excellent treatment. If relief is not obtained, and the physician is not within call, inhale ether moderately. Do not take it internally.
The lochia is the flow from the vagina which occurs after confinement. At first it has the appearance of fresh blood, then becomes lighter in color, and finally is only a glairy mucus. This varies greatly in amount and duration. As a rule the healthier the woman, and more natural the labor, the less the flow. Cases have come to my knowledge where there was no sanguineous flow, and the patient made a rapid recovery. It is said that healthy squaws have no flow of blood with menstruation, or after delivery. If there is no constitutional disturbance, there need be no anxiety about a scanty flow. If caused by a chill, fever or inflammation, etc., prompt attention will be required, according to accompanying symptoms.
Metrorrhagia, or profuse flow, often requires treatment before medical aid can be secured. Hot fomentations, hot sitz-bath and hot vaginal injections are the very best applications. Recently the medical profession recognize that heat is better than cold, to arrest hemorrhage. In surgery, hot water is applied to exposed bleeding vessels. Cases are known where hot vaginal injections have instantly arrested bleeding that had resisted applications of ice, styptics and the tampon.
A lady in Michigan, during the menopause, was taken suddenly with violent hemorrhage. For seven days and nights everything was tried in vain to arrest the bleeding. She became cold and clammy, had frequent fainting spells, and death seemed imminent. An old nurse came to take care of her over night. She set aside the physician’s potions and applications. She filled the big wood stove with bricks, and as fast as they were heated wrapped them in wet cloths and put them about the patient, who thus obtained her first sleep for days. The hot bricks were kept to her four days and nights. There was no return of hemorrhage. She made a rapid recovery.