The Perineum. The nurse will bathe the area between your thighs very carefully, at regular intervals, using pledgets soaked in some kind of antiseptic solution, and put on a fresh one of the sterile pads that you made and sterilized some weeks back. This attention is partly to promote your comfort and partly to remove any infective material that may be present, thus preventing fever. After the care that you have had up to this time, it will scarcely be possible for you to have childbed fever if all infective material is kept away from the vaginal outlet. I speak of this in order that you may realize how important it is for you to avoid touching these parts with your fingers, upon which there are almost certain to be germs. There is little doubt that women sometimes seriously infect themselves after the doctor and nurse have taken the most scrupulous care to protect them from this very complication.
Your breasts will be given painstaking care in order that the baby may nurse satisfactorily and to prevent both sore nipples and breast abscesses. If you cared for your breasts during the latter part of pregnancy as was advised in Chapter V and will continue to observe ordinary precautions while the baby is nursing, it is not at all likely that you will have any trouble with your breasts.
The main features of the care of your breasts, now, are keeping the nipples clean and supporting the breasts themselves if they grow heavy enough to be uncomfortable. This latter condition is not uncommon about the third or fourth day after the baby is born, when the colostrum is replaced by what one might call almost a rush of milk. The breasts may then become hard, swollen and uncomfortable and sometimes a sensitive lump or “cake” may be felt. The usual course, nowadays is simply to support those swollen breasts and to apply ice bags or hot compresses to the painful areas.
There are innumerable bandages and methods for supporting heavy breasts, any one of which is satisfactory so long as it meets the two chief requirements: to lift the breasts, suspending their weight from the shoulders, and, while fitting snugly below, to avoid making pressure at any point, particularly over the nipples. One may take a towel for example, or a straight strip of muslin, fasten it around the chest, pin in darts below the breasts with safety-pins, and provide support by means of shoulder straps, attached with safety-pins to the front and back of the binder. Fig. [25] shows such a binder being used to hold ice bags in place, for which also it is satisfactory and very easily devised.
Fig. 25.—Straight binder for supporting heavy breasts, or holding ice caps in place on breasts that are painful. Darts are pinned in below the breasts and the binder is held up by shoulder straps, pinned on front and back.
Fig. 26.—Supporting heavy breasts by means of three folded towels; one fastened about the waist, one over each shoulder, crossing front and back.
Three folded towels or folded bands of muslin will provide a comfortable support if applied in the sling-like manner indicated in Fig. [26]; the Indian binder shown in Fig. [27], made of cheesecloth or any soft material is cool, light and very comfortable, and in addition to these improvised binders there are several entirely satisfactory brassières, opening down the front, to be bought in the shops. Happily the discomfort from swollen breasts lasts only a day or two, for in some mysterious way Nature makes an adjustment between the amount of milk produced by the mother and that withdrawn by the baby. So as he comes to nurse regularly and satisfactorily, the excessive supply of milk disappears, and with it the discomfort.
