Better babies and their care

by Anna Steese Richardson

The measuring board used at the Better Babies Contests is a great convenience and can be made by any carpenter. It consists of a smoothly planed board forty inches long and eleven inches wide, with a firm, upright headpiece, and a sliding footboard which runs on grooves on the outer edges of the board. On one of these edges is tacked a steel tape, in the inch-scale. The baby, up to eighteen months of age, is laid on the board with the back of the body touching the board all along, from head to foot. The nurse makes sure that the little head is placed firmly against the headpiece. Then, while the mother or some other assistant holds the baby’s knees firmly in place, the nurse adjusts the sliding board until it touches the flat soles of the baby’s feet. The child is then lifted up, without moving the footboard, and the measurement is read from the tape where the footboard stops.

After the child is eighteen months old it is measured standing. For this purpose the board is reversed. The firm headpiece is placed on the floor for the child to stand on, and the sliding footboard is brought down to touch the top of the child’s head.

After its third year, the child may be measured according to good old nursery tradition, by a pencil mark against the woodwork.

Measuring a baby with a tape-line is not accurate. While the height is not so important a factor as the weight in determining the development and especially the nutrition of the baby, it should be watched; and this measuring board, which represents an investment of only a dollar or so, will be found very useful.

The baby that is thriving on mother’s milk should show a gain of at least two pounds at the end of thirty days. The baby which weighed seven pounds at birth should weigh nine pounds when one month old; ten and one-half pounds at two months; twelve pounds at three months. When the gain is less than these figures, the baby’s diet needs attention. The following symptoms point to the fact that the mother’s milk does not agree with the child:

(1) Excessive vomiting, with loss of weight or no increase of weight for two weeks or more.

(2) A persistent diarrhea, with loss of weight or no increase of weight for two weeks or more. If there is a progressive gain in weight, however, loose bowels are not a danger signal.

(3) Steady loss of weight extending over a period of three weeks or more, in spite of the fact that otherwise the child seems normal.

Sometimes the trouble can be corrected by a change in the mother’s diet; and this must be discussed with the family physician. Sometimes the mother is too much exhausted by household duties to provide the amount and quality of milk needed to nourish the child. If it is possible to lighten the mother’s burdens, and thereby strengthen the breast milk, this is better economy than investing in bottles and artificial food.

If, in spite of the doctor’s efforts to build up the mother’s strength and improve the quality of the breast milk, the baby does not thrive, then mother and doctor together must work out the problem of artificial feeding.