What a Young Wife Ought to Know

by Emma F. Angell Drake

Beginning with the fourth month sitz baths (a bath taken in a sitting posture with only the parts about the hips submerged) should be taken as often as twice weekly for the following three months, and after this to the close of the period, every night just before retiring. The water should be as hot as can well be borne, and the bath continued for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, while a half hour can do no harm if it be enjoyed. Warm water should be added to keep the bath at an even temperature. Of course this should be taken in a warm room where there is no danger of a chill at the time or after.

With proper exercise and the baths, there will be no need of bandaging to hold up the pendant abdomen, for the strengthened muscles will do their work better than art can do it.

A word right here will not be out of place, upon the subject of threatened miscarriages. Young wives who are uninformed on these things will often be greatly troubled at symptoms which to them may seem alarming, which are not so at all, while on the other hand they may pass over too lightly other symptoms that are really grave in character.

At any time throughout the pregnancy a flow of blood, even if slight, must be considered grave enough to call for the counsel of the physician. Pains simulating menstrual pains, if at all aggravated must be looked after, and not be allowed to continue. Great care should always be taken at what would have been were she not pregnant, the regular monthly period, as the greatest danger of miscarriage comes at these times. No undue exercise should be taken, but instead, all the work, recreation and exercise should be rather under the ordinary, at these periods.

If miscarriage threatens, the first symptom to cause alarm will be a flow of more or less amount, and, on the appearance of this the physician should be at once consulted. Following this there should be enforced rest, preferably in a reclining position, for several days, until all fears that there will be a return are allayed, then the usual cares must be resumed with caution.

To guard against threatened miscarriage any young wife need only observe the rules which govern right living and carefulness, and she need have no fear.

All this for preservation and care; now a further word.

It has been remarked by travellers in Italy, that many of the native children bear a striking resemblance to the pictures of the child Jesus, from the adoration which the mothers give the Madonnas. The same truth is here again taught, that we not only become like what we most love, and think most about, but that we may transmit this likeness to our little ones. O mothers! what an incentive to high and noble thinking, and to worthy objects for our loves.

So far as inheritance goes this is too true, but there is another side which we must not fail to emphasize. Surroundings and education, with the grace of God, may do very much to eradicate harmful hereditary tendencies. Yet the truth remains that the prevailing tendencies of a life are inborn, and unless they are set in the right direction, we do battle against them at fearful odds, and with an expenditure of a vast amount of strength, that used otherwise would give us a long push in the successful journey of life.

Harriet Prescott Spofford has in her inimitable way put the truth of this mother inheritance in these words: “No intelligence, no cunning, no benevolence, could evade the inevitable. For what she was, that her child was. You do not gather figs from thistles. What she had made herself, she had made her child; what she had become that her child became also. In being born the child became all that.”