OUR BABIES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 24, 24 December 1932, Page 11

OUR BABIES

(By Hygeia.) Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulanco at the bottom.”

BABY’S FIRST MONTH

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LACTATION.

The importance of a right start for both mother and baby at this juncture cannot be over-emphasised. As soon as the mother has settlod down comfortably after childbirth, and always within 12 hours of birth, the baby should be put to both breasts for a few minutes, as it is the sucking of the baby which provides the stimulus in bringing in the milk, and also the fluid (colostrum) first secreted is an important food. The second day feeding at six-hourly intervals is usual, and after that at three or four-hourly intervals, whichever is decided upon by the doctor or nurse in charge. Care should be taken not to leave the baby at the breast for more than a few minutes at first, for two reasons: (1) Prolonged sucking teaches the baby bad habits, and is likely to end in his refusal to take the breast if he is kept at it when empty. (2) It is bad for the nipple. A strong sucker kept too long sucking an empty breast may cause the skin to become sodden and crack.

The time may be gradually increased to 15 to 20 minutes at a feeding as the milk comes in, and if the baby shows no signs of overfeeding. No definite rule as to the time needed for sucking can be laid down. A quarter of an hour is a fair average, but some need 20 minutes, while others get all they ought to have in less than 10 minutes, as test weighings have repeatedly proved. No night feed should be given from the first. This gives the mother and cliild a good eight hours’ rest. Whether the first feed is given at 5 or 6 a.m. in tho morning, the second feeding should he regular—at the next three or fourhourly interval. Should baby awake and cry in the night, lie should be changed if wet, and tucked up warmly in his cot again. Don’t talk to him while doing this (ho soon learns to expect such attentions),’ and never should he be taken into the mother’s or nurse’s bed. If the habit of night feeding be established children are sometimes bad sleopers for years. A healthy breast-fed infant soon learns to take sufficient food in the day, if only the nurse and mother are firm enough in the beginning, realising that a little crying at first is going to be for the ultimate good of the child. In the Karitane Hospitals all the normal resident babies have no night feed, and these babies are rarely heard after their 10 p.m. feed till they are awakened for their next morning feed at 6 a.m. The wrong habit is sometimes started to relieve, the mother whose breasts are painful in the night. A little milk should be expressed or drawn off with a breast pump, and the breasts firmly supported. To begin giving a night feed even for this reason is wrong, as most assuredly the baby has to be broken of this habit later on. Whatever intervals of feeding are decided upon must be strictly adhered to, as the regular emptying of the' breasts is very important in establishing lactation. Many mothers think it is very cruel to waken a baby for a feed, and so live in a constant muddle as to meal times, rest periods and outings. This is a mistaken kindness, and mother and baby should live by the clock. Tho routine is established in a few weeks, and no clock is needed—the baby himself acts as a clock 1 “The reasons for regular feeding may be given as they concern (1) the mother, and (2) the child. (1) Regular feeding times make sure of tho breast being worked and rested, so as to obtain the best results from it, and to make the duty less irksome to the mother by the fixed hours, allowing her to arrange other duties so as to fit in with them. (2) Regularity in feeding secures the proper apportionment of work and rest to the infant’s digestive tract. A baby differs from the suckling animal or from the baby of the uncivilised savage in that as lie grows up his meal time, sleep time, play’ time and work time will be determined by social circumstances. The careless, shiftless and ignorant mother whose child is brought up without method and given the breast whenever ho cries for it is injuring both the health and character of her child. Not only is he likely to have disturbed digestion and irregularities in the action oi the bowels, but he is acquiring the slipshod ways of his parents, and, without discipline in self-control, he grows up self-willed and unable to adapt himself to our customs, and is neither physically or morally’ a credit to the race. Extract from “A Text Book for Midwives,” by Dr. Fairbairn.