Another mistaken belief about babies has been that they are born “delicate” or “strong”; and, as they are born, so must they live—that is, if they live at all! The delicate baby has been regarded as a cross, to be carried with patience and resignation. Mother trotted and dosed it by day; Father walked the floor with it by night; and the neighbors pitied them both. The idea that the poor little tot was born with the right to acquire strength and health was not preached: the thought of calling in science to transform the delicate baby into a strong one is comparatively new.
Fortunately for the race, a few brave spirits in the medical profession decided to defy tradition and study babies as controllable human machines rather than as dispensations of a more or less kindly Providence. They found that babies born healthy and normal could be kept that way; that babies born puny and delicate could be made sturdy and strong; that even babies born with inherited defects, physical and mental, could be so treated that they would develop into useful, self-supporting citizens, where once they were consigned to that hideous human scrap-heap, the institutions for defective and feeble-minded children.
Only those of us who have followed the work of specialists in children’s diseases—pediatrists, as they are known in the medical profession—can appreciate what marvels have been worked in children born without the birthright of good health. Now these men are going farther. They stand behind the twentieth-century campaign for public education among women in the care and feeding of children. They have rent the veil of mystery which so long has surrounded medical learning; they have written books for mothers, couched not in dictionary-defying terms, but in simple English which the average mother can understand; they have given public talks to mothers on infant feeding; and now they are leading the movement for health conferences between parents, physicians, and health officers—city, county, and state—and for what are known as Better Babies Contests, where babies are brought by their parents for examination in physical and mental development.
All these signs indicate a new and popular appreciation of what is known as preventive medicine. The broad-minded physician practises preventive medicine. The progressive mother works with the progressive physician, and the baby profits by the combination. To-day there is little excuse for a colicky, crying, sickly baby in the family circle. Except in rare cases, when the baby’s poor condition does not improve under intelligent mother-care, modern medical science can effect a cure. What generally stands between the sick baby and its cure to-day is ignorance or tradition on the part of the parent, who clings to the belief that strong babies are born to live, that weak babies are born to die, and that the Creator has decreed it!
In reality the Creator should not be held responsible for the physical future of the child. Its normal development is practically in the hands of the mother. In the midst of this magnificent campaign for the intelligent care and feeding of infants, she has no right to remain ignorant. Lectures, conferences, and books are at her command; and what this simple preventive medicine teaches her to do for her child she is morally bound to perform.
And this brings us back to the original statement at the head of this chapter: Sound digestion in the family baby stands for many good things—more especially for the safety and comfort of the baby. So it is most important that the mother ask herself:
“What is the condition of my baby’s digestion?”
The baby whose digestion is in good order gains steadily in weight, has firm flesh, a clear skin, and good color. During the first few months of its life it sleeps two or three hours after nursing; and during the brief periods of wakefulness it is quiet, good-natured, and quite content to lie staring at nothing. It does not demand attention, rocking or walking. It has an excellent appetite, nursing with relish, often greedily. This does not mean whimpering or fretting for food. The baby that tugs nervously at the breast is not properly nourished.
The healthy baby may have what is known as regurgitation, which is best described as the overflow when the baby has taken more milk than its little stomach will hold. The milk, uncurdled, practically exactly as it was swallowed, rolls out of the baby’s mouth without any gagging or muscular contraction. This is especially apt to happen when there is an unusually strong flow of mother’s milk; or when the nipple hole is too large for the bottle-fed baby.
The healthy baby does not have colic or gas on the stomach.