Getting ready to be a mother

by Carolyn Conant Van Blarcom

Fig. 51.—Method of comfortably supporting the baby’s head above the water while giving his bath.

The new baby is not usually kept in the tub for more than two or three minutes, but when he is three or four months old he may stay in for five minutes and still longer as he grows older.

Hot water should never be poured into the tub after the baby has been placed in his bath but cold water is often added, for a three or four months old baby, or the warm bath followed by a quick sponge with cold water. The little body is quickly patted dry, afterwards, and rubbed briskly with the palm of the hand; the legs and arms stroked toward the body; the back from the neck downward and the chest and abdomen with a circular motion. Babies who react well to cold baths are benefited by them, but those who do not, may be harmed. Such “toughening” methods, to be beneficial, therefore, must be adjusted very carefully to the individual baby and should be employed only in accordance with the doctor’s directions.

The genitals should be bathed and dried with care; inspected daily and any unusual appearance reported to the doctor. It is not uncommon for girl babies to have a slight bloody discharge from the vagina. Although this is unimportant and soon disappears, your doctor should be told of any discharge, however slight. The doctor often wishes to have the foreskin of boy babies retracted every morning at the time of the bath, by gently rubbing it back with gauze or cotton, taking pains that it is pulled forward to the original position after the part underneath has been thoroughly bathed with boracic acid solution. If retraction is impossible after several daily attempts, the baby is not infrequently circumcised.

The care of the baby’s teeth is a part of the bath and should begin when the first tooth appears. It should be wiped front and back with a piece of gauze or cotton dipped in boracic acid or soda solution or some other weak alkaline wash, to neutralize the acid secretions of the mouth as these favor decay. After the baby has five or six teeth, the use of a very soft brush with tooth paste is often advised, the teeth being brushed with a circular motion or from the gums toward their edges. The teeth should be wiped, or brushed, morning and evening and after feedings. The reason for such close care of the temporary teeth is that they serve as a mold or brace to hold the jaws in proper shape for the permanent teeth which appear later. If the “milk” or first teeth decay or crumble away before the jaws are developed to the point when the permanent teeth appear, these second teeth are likely to be crowded, crooked and uneven.

After all of these details have been attended to and the entire body, including creases and folds, has been patted quite dry, it may be dusted with an unscented talcum powder, but this powdering must not be resorted to as an aid in drying the skin. In order to prevent chafing, the buttocks and thighs should be wiped clean with oil, or bathed with warm water, no soap, patted dry and powdered or oiled each time that the diaper is changed.

The cord has dropped off, in all probability, by the time you begin to bathe your baby, and the navel so well healed that you need do nothing to it, but you may be interested to know what painstaking care the nurse has given to this important detail of the baby’s toilet. The form and method of cord dressings vary somewhat with different doctors but in practically all cases the dressings are sterile, to prevent infection, and porous in order that air may gain access to the cord and promote the drying process. The dressing itself may consist of dry, sterile gauze or gauze wet with alcohol wrapped about the cord, as shown in Fig. [52]; or it may consist of squares of sterile gauze or muslin with holes in the centers to fit around the cord, and dusted with some such powder as boric acid, bismuth or salicylic acid and starch. The dressed cord is laid flat on the abdomen and directed upward to prevent its being wet with urine; a gauze sponge is placed over the dressing and the flannel binder applied, being sewed on or held in place with safety-pins, as shown in Fig. [53].

Fig. 52.—Cord dressed with dry sterile gauze. (From photograph taken at Johns Hopkins Hospital.)