Better babies and their care

by Anna Steese Richardson

TAKING DEFECTS IN TIME—HABITS THAT MAKE CHILDREN UGLY—FINGER-SUCKING AND NAIL-BITING—BED-WETTING—VICIOUS HABITS AND THEIR CURE—NERVOUSNESS AND ITS TREATMENT—THE HABIT OF HAPPINESS

Physically, mentally, and spiritually, the baby laid in the young mother’s arm is a creature to be molded by the intelligence and wisdom of the woman who has borne it. Some women do not stop to define the wonderful, mysterious thrill which passes over them as they hold the precious gift close to their hearts for the first time. With other women a sense of responsibility, beautiful and almost divine, comes even before the child is born.

Barring deformities and constitutional defects, the average baby is pliable in the hands of the mother. The preceding chapters have told how a mother can give her child a fair start by intelligent care and feeding. In this chapter we will go farther and show how the mother can guard against ugliness in looks and character.

Mothers—and doctors—are waking up to the realization that preventive medicine is the crying need among babies. The day when babies were supposed to “outgrow” certain disfigurements or tendencies to disease or weakness is past. Most of us can look back to the barbarous practice of soothing a baby with paregoric and then trusting to nature to relieve the condition which made soothing necessary. We really seemed to think that a miracle would be worked while the baby slept!

If a baby had any terrible deformity or acute disease we turned to a surgeon or physician, but we took long chances when the baby was merely good. We never stopped to figure that a good baby could be made a better baby by intelligent care, a better baby transformed into a well-nigh perfect baby. And yet parents owe to the children they bring into the world precisely this care.

One of the most interesting features of the Better Babies Contests which I have visited has been the amazement of some mothers when they discovered that, with a little care and attention, they could work such wonders in their babies. As an example, in one city near New York, the physicians in charge of the examinations at a contest asked me if I would attend a meeting or “dress rehearsal” of the examination a few weeks before the contest. They wanted a demonstration of just how babies are examined by a scorecard. So all the arrangements were made, the physicians agreeing to have a real baby on hand for a “model,” to undergo the full examination.

The baby was scored precisely as if a regular contest were under way, and was penalized 5 points for a rough skin and 15 points for an eruption. The mother protested vigorously. The doctors showed her a fine eruption over the abdomen and under the armpits. She declared that the child had always had the marks—they were a sort of birthmark. The doctors explained that such an eruption indicated overfeeding. Here was a bottle-fed baby getting too heavy fare. The mother admitted that she knew nothing about modifying the milk. The doctors told her how it should be done.

The roughness of the skin was due to mosquito bites, numbers of them. The mother said that she couldn’t help that and neither could the baby. That was the fault of the mosquitoes! The doctors did not agree with her. They explained that a careful mother protected her child from the mosquitoes with a netting, that mosquitoes carried disease, that the itching sores made the baby nervous.

The mother listened resentfully, especially when she saw that by the card her baby scored only 89. Nevertheless, she must have thought a great deal about what those doctors said, because when the real contest was held in her city six weeks later, she entered her baby and it carried off first prize, scoring 98 per cent. The chairman of the committee in charge of the work wrote me that this mother had lightened the quality of the baby’s food and the rash had disappeared. She had cleared the house of mosquitoes, and the baby’s skin was smooth as a rose petal! Which shows that a Better Babies Contest makes mothers think—and act. Also, that a child can be made healthier and happier with just a little thought and attention.

Your child has a right to all the beauty with which you can endow it. If your baby has thin eyebrows and lashes, try to encourage their growth. It can be done. Feed the eyebrows with a little cocoa butter, or vaseline. If you are very careful you can even touch the lashes with a tiny camel’s-hair brush dipped in melted vaseline. I know a man and wife whose looks were marred by scanty lashes and colorless brows. When her babies came this woman determined to do something to improve this unfortunate inheritance. She rubbed vaseline into the brows, had the lashes cut twice before the babies were three months old, asking the family physician, an excellent surgeon, to do this for her, and then she touched the roots of the lashes with melted vaseline. Her children, now in their teens, have beautiful brows and lashes.