Every nurse should recognize it as her duty to advise an unsupervised, pregnant woman to place herself under medical care, no matter under what conditions she meets her.
In the discharge of her duties, the nurse will sometimes need no little ingenuity to adapt the routines of prenatal care, as prescribed by her organization, to the mentality, traditions and varied demands of the daily lives of her patients. But this will have to be done, for though in a general way the needs of all expectant mothers are the same, their circumstances and personalities are infinitely varied.
It may require undreamed-of tact and resourcefulness to convince a patient that details of care, which seem wholly unrelated to her or her baby’s welfare, will actually increase their chances for life and health. For this reason, it is of almost prime importance that the nurse win her patient’s friendship and confidence. She will then scarcely realize that she is being taught, but will do and continue to do as she is advised, because of an almost insensible reliance upon the judgment and sincerity of her counsellors.
It is not the single examination of a specimen of urine that counts, nor the exercise taken with pleasure and enthusiasm during the first few days of its novelty. It is not the rest, fresh air nor proper food, taken according to rule for a week or two, that will keep her fit. It is the aggregate and repetition of the infinite number of details that make up the expectant mother’s mental and physical life during twenty-four hours in each day, seven days a week, throughout forty long weeks, that grow longer and more monotonous as pregnancy advances; it is the mosaic that she makes out of the minutiae of her daily life that counts. And paradoxical as it seems, she must shape her days to meet her own and her baby’s needs with such steady persistence that she finally lives them almost unconsciously of what she is doing, and also without introspection.
Obviously, then, the expectant mother’s mental attitude is of considerable importance.
She should in general continue the diversions, work and amusements that she is accustomed to and enjoys, if they are not contra-indicated; cultivate a cheerful, hopeful frame of mind; guard against being self-centred and over watchful of symptoms, and at the same time not adopt the dangerous habit of uncomplainingly ascribing to pregnancy all of the discomforts and unfamiliar conditions which may arise. In short, to forget that she is pregnant in so far as that is consistent with the care that she should take of herself.
She should understand that childbearing is a normal function, but, like other normal functions, may become abnormal if neglected; and that a sick pregnancy is not a normal one.
In connection with the patient’s mental attitude and her anxieties, the nurse may be of great comfort in helping to dispel superstitions and the widely credited and depressing beliefs concerning maternal impressions.
After one has traced the development of the human body in the uterus, and even faintly understood its growth and method of nourishment, it is impossible to believe that the mother’s thoughts or experiences could in any way deform or mark her child, or alter its sex. That the mother’s “reaching up,” for example, could slip the cord around the unborn baby’s neck is manifestly absurd, as well as the previously mentioned superstitions about the eight-month baby’s slender chances for survival.
But superstitions are always fondly cherished, for, as Gibbon tells us, “the practise of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.” We can scarcely wonder however that even intelligent and educated people hold utterly improbable beliefs about pregnancy, for the most fanciful of them are quite as easy to believe as the thing that we know actually occurs—the development of a human body from a single cell.