Let beauty and simplicity, honesty and frankness, be your guide in your nurseries, and then you will not have very much trouble with your children.
CHAPTER XVI.
IN RETIREMENT.
There comes a time in most households when the mistress has perforce to contemplate an enforced retirement from public life; and I wish to impress upon all those who may be in a similar plight that the time will pass much more quickly and agreeably if the room selected for the temporary prison is made as pretty, convenient, and as unlike the orthodox sick-room as can be managed.
Naturally these times are looked forward to with dread by all young wives. They are fully convinced that they must die, and in fact make themselves perfectly wretched and miserable because of their ignorance, and of their not unnatural dislike to speak of their dreads and fears; and though, of course, I can only lightly touch on these matters in a book which I trust may be widely used and read, I want to whisper a few words to reassure all those who may be contemplating the arrival of No. 1. If girls are brought up in a proper, healthy manner, if they do not rush about from ball to party or from one excitement to the other, if they realise their condition, and dress and rest themselves properly beforehand, in nine cases out of ten the illness, being a natural one, has no attendant dangers, and should therefore be looked upon in an entirely different manner than it is at present. There is a most excellent little book published by Messrs. Churchill, and written by Dr. Chevasse, which all young wives should procure. It is called ‘Advice to a Wife,’ and is a really necessary possession. This can be supplemented later by ‘Advice to a Mother’ (same author and publisher); and, possessed of these books, any young matron can manage herself most successfully without the constant harassment of continually seeing the doctor. But, besides the purely medical aspect of the case, there are matters that can and must be arranged early, and by the expectant mother herself alone; and one of these, and the most important of all, is undoubtedly the choice of the nurse, who should be engaged as early as possible, for most good nurses are secured as soon as it is probable their services will be required later on. And as, to my mind, a good nurse is ‘all the battle,’ this once secured the worst is over, and Angelina may contemplate the future, if not with absolute calmness, at all events with a brave and trustful heart. I do not think too much stress can be laid upon this looking after a nurse. And though girls may indeed congratulate themselves on their position to-day as regards the orthodox monthly nurse, as contrasted with their mothers’ and grandmothers’ accounts of all they suffered at the hands of the old-time Mrs. Gamp, with whose vagaries we are all so familiar, still great care must be exercised in the choice, as nothing is so important, especially for No. 1, as to have a really good, kind woman in the nurse, and one who will neither unduly coddle the patient nor allow her to do rash things, of which she will most certainly repent unto her dying day; and I should like to implore any one who is contemplating the arrival of King Baby not to trust entirely to the doctor’s recommendation, but to rely for once, at least, on her mother’s advice, and to employ some one who is personally known to some member of the family.
I have known, and still know, a nurse who is simply perfect. She is of no use to the general public, as ‘her ladies’ keep her well employed among themselves and their friends, but I shall write a little about her here, as a guide to those who may be likely to require some one in a similar capacity.
But before I do this let me say a few words about the extreme folly, from my point of view, of engaging what is called a lady-nurse. ‘She is so companionable, so delightful, so much nicer than any mere working woman can possibly be,’ say those who have friends they wish to find places for; but I must declare I have never, in all my large experience, found them in the very least bit satisfactory or of the very least use practically.
As a theory they are all they ought to be; but in practice they are a most dismal failure! They will keep the room pretty with flowers, and will forget to remove them at night; and they will do what I may term the decorative parts of nursing, leaving all the more practical ones to any of the already overworked servants who can be pressed into the service, and who of course resent this immensely, and generally give warning at a most inconvenient time; but I have really found them do very little besides this!
Thinking of my good nurse causes me to remember other things in connection with these events, on which I will touch for one moment; the while I maintain strenuously that, as a rule, not half enough loving thought is bestowed upon the mother, who, I insist, should be the first object of every one’s care until she has been for at least a fortnight over her trouble; and I trace a good deal of my own nervous irritability and ill-health to the fact that after my last baby arrived I had an enormous quantity of small worries that the presence in the house of a careful guard would have obviated, and to the fact that wearisome details of an illness of a relative were carried to me as usual, and I had to see to matters that should never have been even whispered about before me, but the arrangement of all of which was left entirely to me; and the only rest I obtained during all that weary time was literally snatched for me, from the jaws of all those who are accustomed to depend on me, by nurse, who was my one bright gleam of hope, and to whose never-failing energy and thoughtfulness I always look back most gratefully and thankfully.
Speaking as I do from experience only, perhaps I may be forgiven if I repeat myself, and beg for far more consideration for the mother than she ever gets. I hope I shall not be considered a monster if I whisper quite low that I do not believe a new baby is anything but a profound nuisance to its relations at the very first. It howls when peace is required, it demands unceasing attention, and it is thrust into Angelina’s arms, and she has to admire it and adore it at the risk of being thought most unnatural, when she really is rather resenting the intrusion, and requires at least a week to reconcile herself to her new fate. My nurse never allows her baby to be a torment. Somehow she has such a pleasant way with her that babies cannot be a trouble where she is. She turns them out always as if they had just come out of a band-box, and one never realises a baby can be unpleasant so long as she has the dressing of them, and the seeing to them generally; but then she is so very methodical, so clean, so bright, so cheerful, that somehow I find, when I come to write down her method, I cannot remember so much what she did as how she did it, and that I cannot recall her routine of work half as easily as I can each detail of her neat form and jolly face, and the perfect joy it was to me to have about me a woman who never fussed, never kept me waiting, always did to-day what she did yesterday at the same time, and, above all, presented me with a nice bright-looking baby to look at just when that infant was wanted, and not at inopportune moments, or just at the special moment when she would have been a worry.