OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2574, 7 August 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.)

Published under the auspices' of the Society for the Promotion of the Llealth of Women and Children. ‘ .

A WANGANUI BABY

I make no apology for publishing in full the following letter which appeared recently in the Wanganui “Herald.” Tho humor of tho writing will ensure its being read, except by those mothers who realise that they own the ruin or loss of their oivn babies to just such ignorant cruelties as “Little Billy” appeals against. Never were truer words concerning the wrongs of babyhood said in seeming jest. The mother must bo dull indeed who does not sec and feel tho pathos involved in the Wanganui baby’s protest.

A BABE’S COMPLAINT [To the Editor.’]

Sir, —I am writing this letter in ray cradle while the grown-ups think lam sleeping. I can’t tell-you how glad 1 am that the people of Wanganui are at least going to see that the babies aro to have fair play and proper food and hope they will tcacli the ignorant and careless woman who calls herself my mam how to feed mo before it is too late. For lam only three months old come Saturday, and already J fear I am doomed to an early tomb. It will be no -pleasures to mo, I can assure you, -when I have exchanged the cradle for the grave, to know that she will show . my photo to hor friends and say: “This was our little Billy, you knoiv, our first-born pined away and died when he was only five months old. Poor little fellow. How he cried.” I’ll tell you what I complain of. In the morning I am naturally hungry and long for something to suck. I am given a dummy! No man, unless ho is daily treated in the same manner, can realise tho disappointment, the horrible sense of deprivation, that dummy conveys. If I could talk there are some words in the vocabulary of tho hairy man who lives in our house that I should use pretty freely On these occasions. After she has done everything o’so she can think of, breakfast time comes, and I am given the bottle, and have to sue 1 , sugared water and half-sour - . .{? through a dirty tube; and th' Tip give me some of her p'* ,-U- 15110 ! tea, and perhaps a lr I feel the biggo-' Lo suck, tin thing in ere- ’ , .. -Vnd most rotund Then I s 1 is my little belly. t} lo i- till dinner time, when o- .miry man comes home hungry ’ .md takes a hand.

He says: “Can’t you keep that kid quiet five minutes while a fellow is getting his dinner?”

And she says: “I’m sure I don’t know what to do with him. Bill. I’ve given him everything I can think of—milk and porridge and beef even, and still he cries.”

“Well ho says, “try him on a diet of scrap’ron, if ho lias an appetite like that.” “ I’m sorry,” she says, very politely, “but we’ve run out of scrapiron, and you can call and get some at the grocer’s on your way home tonight. But in the . meantime you might trv him with a few of your .nashod potatoes, a bit of your sausage, and a drop of your beer.. Sausage can’t hurt him. Ht’s already chewed:” ■Of course, in an hour there are ructions. Unfortunately I can’t control my hands, or I should put them on the pain and keep them there. But I weep ! Oh ! I weep aloud. And in a voice that she means to be sympathetic she asks: “And is his poor little tummy bad?” Of course his poor little tummy is bad. But —good heavens —who made his poor little tummy bad? And who is preparing me day by day for that little patch in the cemetery' where so many poor little babies lie, blit that good, kind, lova-blc, but horribly ignorant woman who calls herself my mam, and who doesn’t know a baby’s stomach from an ostrich’s crop.— Yours faithfully, but not, I am afraid, for very long, Little Billy.