Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those Who are Creating the Future

by Marie Carmichael Stopes

(2) Those entirely artificial; these are quite needless and are the results of either ignorance or our gross disregard of known facts, and can be entirely eradicated.

(3) Those which are to-day very usual, but which knowledge and a better mode of life may entirely conquer.

Now to consider first the third group: those which are general, but which a knowledge could or should conquer.

One of the first signs that she is to become a mother, and one of the most usual experiences of a young woman when this time begins, is the daily recurrence of that penetrating nausea and sickness usually after she has risen in the morning, called “Morning Sickness.” This is so usual that medical practitioners rely on it to some extent as a sign of pregnancy. It is described in almost every book for the prospective mother, and, as I have mentioned (p. [72]), it is sometimes even maintained by distinguished gynecologists as a physiological function, i.e., a normal function.

Now this is a very nauseating and wretched experience to the majority of women, and it is one which, I maintain, is entirely imposed by ignorance, wrong living and the general hypnotic effect of others’ perverted views on the woman’s system. In those women whose internal organs are improperly placed or somewhat malformed, it occurs as a physiological result of pressure or other disturbance. In true health there is no physiological reason whatever for the morning sickness, and a woman who lives as she should live during the time of her coming motherhood need not experience it. This should, in the next generation, be entirely conquered, because it is to a very large extent caused by allowing, even forcing to wear corsets, girls when they are still unformed and developing. Those women who have never worn corsets in the whole of their lives, and who dress as they should dress, and do as they should do during the months when they are becoming mothers, seldom experience morning sickness. Though there are some who, when they know the child is coming, discard their corsets too late, and these may still experience this unpleasant feature. The extraordinary adaptability and vitality in a woman’s system, however, is a remarkable thing, and even those who begin later in life than they should to train for motherhood may yet accomplish much.

Granted a healthy, well-formed body, a previous life of normal activity, sensible attention to the following points will insure complete freedom from morning sickness in all but the exceptional and pre-disposed:—

(a) Discard every scrap of heavy or constricting clothing, wearing only the lightest garments hung from the shoulders entirely.

As I said in Married Love the standard of dressing for the prospective mother, whose garments should be of the lightest wool and silk if possible, and should be so lightly hung that a butterfly can walk the length of her body without tearing its wings.

(b) Discard all rich, heavy and over-cooked foods, such as pastries and hot cakes, dried peas and beans, rich game or highly seasoned dishes, and live as much as possible on uncooked foods and simple milk puddings, stewed fruit, lightly cooked meat and fish, with the largest obtainable quantity of very fresh ripe fruit.