Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug.”[^[129]]

721. The best way of “drying up the milk” is to apply to each breast soap plaster (emplastrum saponis), spread on soft pieces of wash-leather, the shape and size of the top of a hat, with a round hole the size of a shilling in the middle of each to admit the nipple, and with a slit from the center to the circumference of each plaster to make a better fit. These plasters ought to be spread by a chemist.

722. When the child is once weaned, the breasts ought not to be drawn, as the drawing of them would cause them to secrete larger quantities of milk; if, therefore, the bosoms be ever so full or uncomfortable, a mother ought to leave them alone; she should wait patiently, and the milk will gradually diminish, and will at length disappear.

723. The drawing of the bosoms, during weaning, either by means of a breast-pump, or by the mouth, or by other like contrivances, has frequently caused gathered breasts. If not drawn, they scarcely, if ever, gather.

724. The foregoing plan of “drying up the milk” will generally in five or six days assuage the milk away; but if, at the end of three days, the bosoms still continue full and uncomfortable, the plasters should be removed, and the breasts ought, every four hours, to be well but tenderly rubbed with equal parts of olive oil and of eau de Cologne; the nurse supporting the bosom, during such friction, with her other hand.

725. Let me impress the above important advice on a nursing mother’s mind; it might save a great deal of after-suffering and misery.

726. It might be well to state that, after the child has been weaned, the milk does not always entirely leave the breast, not even for weeks, and, in some cases, not even for months; it is not of the slightest consequence, and requires no treatment to get rid of it.

727. A mother ought, during the period of weaning, to live abstemiously, and should drink as little as possible. In many cases, it is necessary to give, every morning, for two or three mornings, a few doses of mild aperient medicine, such as either a Seidlitz powder, or a teaspoonful of Henry’s magnesia and a teaspoonful of Epsom salts in half a tumbler of warm water.

728. Symptoms denoting the necessity of weaning.—A mother sometimes cannot suckle her child; the attempt bringing on a train of symptoms somewhat similar to the following: singing in the ears; dimness of sight; aching of the eyeballs; throbbing in the head; nervousness; hysterics; tremblings; faintness; loss of appetite and of flesh; fluttering and palpitation of the heart; feelings of great exhaustion; indigestion; costiveness; sinking sensations of the stomach; pains in the left side; great weakness and dragging pains of the loins, which are usually increased whenever the infant is put to the bosom; pallor of the countenance; shortness of breath; swelling of the ankles.

729. Of course, every mother who is suffering from suckling does not have the whole of the above long catalogue of symptoms! But if she has three or four of the more serious of them, she ought not to disobey the warnings, but should discontinue nursing; although it may be necessary, if the babe himself be not old enough to wean, to obtain a healthy wet-nurse to take her place.