It will be recalled that mother’s milk up to the fourth or fifth day is practically sweetened water on which the baby thrives. The child’s digestion is not injured when the flow of mother’s milk is suddenly established and becomes rich. In planning the diet for a bottle-fed baby, those who have given the matter study follow as closely as possible the rules laid down by nature in supplying breast milk.
These are the simplest and most reliable of formulas with plain milk as the foundation.
The use of cream and top milk in the place of plain milk seems to be purely a matter of difference of opinion between medical authorities. If the top milk is used, the quantity of boiled water used in modifying it must be greater, and gruels are added at a much later date.
A question frequently brought up at contests was that of adding lime water to modified milk. This, too, represents a difference in medical opinion. Dr. L. Emmett Holt, one of the first American specialists in the care and feeding of children, advises that one ounce of lime water be included in every twenty ounces of modified milk, to correct acidity in cow’s milk. Dr. Roger H. Dennett, Professor of Pediatrics at the Post Graduate Hospital, New York City, does not consider lime water essential to a successful formula. Other authorities differ in the same way. The mother who feels any anxiety on this score will do well to consult her own physician, who can study at first hand the general condition of the baby, its appearance, the stools it passes, and what it may vomit if the artificial food is not properly digested.
There are almost as many feeding tables in existence as there are specialists in the care of children. This is another question where hard and fast rules cannot be laid down. But here are some general tables which have borne the test in families where artificial feeding is a stern necessity:
Any baby weaned under three months of age should have bottle feedings as it would have had breast feedings, at intervals of every two hours between 6 A.M. and 10 P.M. It should also have one feeding in the night between one and two o’clock. This represents ten feedings in twenty-four hours, up to the time the child is three months old.
The quantity to be supplied at each feeding varies with the baby’s age:
During the first week the baby should be given one and one-half ounces at each feeding. This, with ten feedings in twenty-four hours, means from ten to fifteen ounces of nourishment a day.
During the second week the amount at each feeding is raised to: 2 ounces, or 20 ounces in twenty-four hours.
Third and fourth weeks: 2½ ounces for each feeding.