See how well the Indian women get along with child-bearing; and you know they are active in their habits, and go a great deal in the open air.
How well, too, the poor, laboring people, the Irish and the Germans, get along in having children; and are not they obliged to work? Labor! verily thou art a blessing which we poor mortals do but poorly prize!
I must say to you, then, in my humble way, to all of you who are pregnant, DO NOT FAIL TO WORK. Work regularly—not too much at a time, but little and often, avoiding all extremes. Go out, too, EVERY DAY, and get the fresh air and light of heaven. So will you be rewarded for every thing you do.
LETTER XI.
MANAGEMENT IN PREGNANCY.
Of the Diet Proper in this Period—Animal and Vegetable Food—Superiority of the latter—The Drink.
I have in different places, in these letters, made some remarks on the subject of food and drink. I thought it necessary, however, to be a little more explicit on so important a matter.
I have in another letter said some things on the subject of those strange and peculiar longings which women sometimes experience in pregnancy, and have given you some advice on that point, which I wish you also to bear in mind in this place.
Have you not often heard women remark, that when they are pregnant they ought to eat more food than at other times, because they have two to support!
It is my duty to tell you in all frankness, as also earnestness, that if any one makes such a plea an excuse for dietetic indulgence; or if any one, from ignorance on the subject, sets to eating more freely in pregnancy than she would do at ordinary times, she will be very liable to harm herself seriously; and more than that, she may thus actually destroy her child, and have an abortion. If she should be so fortunate as to run clear of this sad evil, she would yet be liable to indigestion, costiveness, diarrhea, and all the long list of troubles that grow out of a disordered state of the stomach and alimentary canal at this period of her life.
Let us make a little calculation in regard to this matter of “having two to support” in pregnancy.