Prenatal Influences
107
The Prenatal Influence of Peace—She who expects to become
a mother should keep her soul in the love of God. Her mind should
be at peace; she should rest in the love of Jesus, practicing the words
of Christ. She should remember that the mother is a laborer together
with God.—
The Signs of the Times, April 9, 1896
. (
The Adventist
Home, 259
.)
Father to Become Acquainted With Physical Law—The
strength of the mother should be tenderly cherished. Instead of spend-
ing her precious strength in exhausting labor, her care and burdens
should be lessened. Often the husband and father is unacquainted
with the physical laws which the well-being of his family requires him
to understand. Absorbed in the struggle for a livelihood, or bent on
acquiring wealth and pressed with cares and perplexities, he allows to
rest upon the wife and mother burdens that overtax her strength at the
most critical period and cause feebleness and disease.—
The Ministry
of Healing, 373
(1905).
Children Robbed of Mental Elasticity—If the mother is de-
prived of the care and comforts she should have, if she is allowed to
exhaust her strength through overwork or through anxiety and gloom,
her children will be robbed of the vital force and of the mental elastic-
ity and cheerful buoyancy they should inherit. Far better will it be to
[133]
make the mother’s life bright and cheerful, to shield her from want,
wearing labor, and depressing care, and let the children inherit good
constitutions so that they may battle their way through life with their
own energetic strength.—
The Ministry of Healing, 375
(1905).
Mother’s Needs Not to Be Neglected—The mother’s physical
needs should in no case be neglected. Two lives are depending upon
her, and her wishes should be tenderly regarded, her needs generously
supplied. But at this time above all others she should avoid, in diet
and in every other line, whatever would lessen physical or mental
strength. By the command of God Himself she is placed under the
most solemn obligation to exercise self-control.—
The Ministry of
Healing, 373
(1905).
Wife’s Responsibility—Women who possess principle and who
are well instructed will not depart from simplicity of diet at this time
[pregnancy] of all others. They will consider that another life is depen-
dent upon them and will be careful in all their habits, and especially in
diet.—
Testimonies for the Church 2:382
(1870).