Getting ready to be a mother

by Carolyn Conant Van Blarcom

I have described to you the details of personal hygiene which your doctor is likely to want you to adopt during your months of expectancy, and some of the simple things that you may do to relieve minor discomforts when they arise, for having these things in black and white may make the whole matter a little easier for you.

But there is still more that you can do to help the doctor help you. You can tell him about any discomfort or any new condition that appears, and follow his advice instead of talking it over with your family or friends. This will make it possible for him to prevent serious complications by treating them in the very beginning.

You have probably learned, in one way or another, that the complications associated with childbirth that are most serious are infections (childbed fever), convulsions, abortions or miscarriages and severe bleeding, but perhaps you have not heard that you, yourself, can help greatly in the prevention of all of these conditions, in your own case, and chiefly by little more than exercising good common sense.

Your part in preventing childbed fever, if your baby is to be born at home, lies in having in readiness a clean room, sterile sheets, towels, gauze pads, etc., as will be described in the next chapter.

Concerning the other complications we shall say a word here.

Convulsions. You can do a great deal toward preventing the condition that causes convulsions by following the advice about your personal care that we have just gone over and by making it possible for the doctor to treat early symptoms promptly. In fact, after looking over the records of many thousands of mothers who have had prenatal care, it seems almost safe to say that the expectant mother who follows such a course will not have convulsions.

One of the commonest of the early symptoms is headache, sometimes persistent and very severe. Others which you can detect are blurred vision, spots before the eyes, dizziness, vomiting which is more persistent or severe than could be called “morning sickness,” puffiness under the eyes or elsewhere about the face or hands, swelling of the feet and ankles and severe pain in the stomach. It might be that if you had even one of these symptoms your doctor would think it worth while to put you to bed and give you nothing but milk, or only water, for a day or two, not because you were sick, but to keep you from being so, on the same principle that you darn a thin place in a stocking to keep a hole from coming.

In any event, tell your doctor about the symptoms and let him decide what is to be done, for therein lies your safety.

Miscarriages. The question of abortions, miscarriages and premature births is one of enormous importance, and one about which there is a good deal of misunderstanding. As to the meaning of the terms, many women are puzzled to know the difference between them. Doctors are not likely to use the word miscarriage, but will describe as an abortion a termination of pregnancy which occurs before the end of the seventh month and as premature labors those occurring from that time until the expected date of confinement. In the minds of lay people, however, the term abortion is often associated with criminal practice, miscarriage being a term loosely applied to all births occurring before the seventh month, while the premature baby is the one born after the seventh month of pregnancy but before the expected date of confinement.

Of all of these accidents, abortions are the most frequent, though in the nature of things it is impossible to say how often they occur. They sometimes happen so early in pregnancy that the expectant mother is unaware of the accident; or if she does know of it she may make the mistake of taking no notice of it or regard it of so little consequence that she does not consult a doctor. But such information as is available suggests that at least one out of every five pregnancies ends in abortion, the tragedy of this being that it is very largely a preventable disaster.