Better babies and their care

by Anna Steese Richardson

Boiling milk—or sterilization, as it is known to medical men—means keeping the milk at a boiling point for at least one hour in a double-boiler. The utensil containing the milk is then set in ice-water so that it will chill in twenty minutes or less. The milk is next poured into clean bottles, corked with sterile cotton wool, and placed on ice.

The milk to be fed to babies should be pasteurized or boiled when there is doubt as to the source of milk supply; also when there is an epidemic current, such as typhoid fever, diphtheria, etc. Both processes are supposed to kill bacteria, boiling being more effective than pasteurization.

It is far better for the baby’s health, however, to secure certified milk than to treat it as described above. Boiled milk may be given to a baby during the first two or three weeks of its life, also to babies suffering with diarrhea and other acute digestive disturbances. But the child who is fed for a great length of time on boiled milk receives no fresh food, and is therefore subject to scurvy.

If, for any reason, the mother feels that it is necessary to feed her baby the boiled milk, she may counteract the effects on a child, three months old or more, with the strained juice of half an orange, morning and evening.

Particularly in mining towns, mothers must depend upon condensed milk as artificial food for babies. While it is much better to use fresh cow’s milk, if it can be secured, the condensed milk is preferable to stale cow’s milk. If a reliable brand is secured, the mother is buying fresh milk which has been sterilized and then evaporated. A can of condensed milk is equal to about three times as much whole or plain milk, sweetened with cane sugar.

When the child must be placed on condensed milk practically at birth, the milk should be diluted in the proportion of one level teaspoonful of condensed milk to sixteen spoonfuls of boiled water. This gives a very weak and watery solution, and the young mother is apt to think it does not contain enough nourishment for her child. But she should bear in mind that mother’s milk is equally thin, yet sufficiently nourishing for the child one week old or less. Forty-eight hours later the dilution may be strengthened to one spoonful of milk to fifteen of water; then gradually to fourteen, etc. At three months the baby may be taking a solution of one part condensed milk to eight parts of barley water.

Babies raised on condensed milk gain rapidly in weight because the condensed milk, being low in fats and proteids, and high in sugar, is easily digested. However, the same children show little resistance when attacked by acute disease, and, if fed on condensed milk exclusively, they may develop rickets or scurvy. It is therefore desirable to secure a good quality of fresh milk to alternate with the condensed milk and, eventually, to serve it for all the feedings.

Medical authorities differ on the question of patent foods. Men who have specialized on the feeding of infants agree that the safest substitute for mother’s milk is modified cow’s milk, and claim that whatever nourishment is drawn from patent foods is due to the sugar or carbohydrates in the patented article and to the cow’s milk with which it is prepared. These foods have no medical or life-giving properties; and most of them, in analysis, show a combination of starches, various kinds of sugar, dried milk, and even eggs. They should be given to the child only under the direction of the family physician.

The same is true of buttermilk, casein milk, and peptonized milk. The use of these foods is necessary only under certain conditions, when the child’s digestion is seriously disturbed. They should not be fed to a baby on the advice of a neighbor or a druggist. I have known many mothers who, at the first sign of indigestion, dosed the baby’s milk with quantities of lime water and peptonizing powder. This should not be done without consulting a physician.

Above all things, the mother of the baby artificially fed should keep calm and cool-headed. Even breast-fed babies have occasional attacks of indigestion, vomiting, colic, and diarrhea, which yield quickly to treatment. The same trouble in bottle-fed babies will yield to treatment.