Mother and Her Child
181
When the Mother’s Duties Should Be Lightened
It is an error generally committed to make no difference in the life
of a woman previous to the birth of her children. At this important
period the labor of the mother should be lightened. Great changes are
going on in her system. It requires a greater amount of blood, and
therefore an increase of food of the most nourishing quality to convert
into blood. Unless she has an abundant supply of nutritious food,
she cannot retain her physical strength, and her offspring is robbed of
vitality.
Her clothing also demands attention. Care should be taken to
protect the body from a sense of chilliness. She should not call vitality
unnecessarily to the surface to supply the want of sufficient clothing.
If the mother is deprived of an abundance of wholesome, nutritious
food, she will lack in the quantity and quality of blood. Her circulation
will be poor, and her child will lack in the very same things. There will
be an inability in the offspring to appropriate food which it can convert
into good blood to nourish the system. The prosperity of mother
and child depends much upon good, warm clothing and a supply of
nourishing food.
The Attitude of the Nursing Mother
The best food for the infant is the food that nature provides. Of
this it should not be needlessly deprived. It is a heartless thing for a
mother, for the sake of convenience or social enjoyment, to seek to
free herself from the tender office of nursing her little one.
The period in which the infant receives its nourishment from the
mother is critical. Many mothers, while nursing their infants, have
been permitted to overlabor and to heat their blood in cooking; and the
nursling has been seriously affected, not only with fevered nourishment
from the mother’s breast, but its blood has been poisoned by the
unhealthy diet of the mother, which has fevered her whole system,
thereby affecting the food of the infant. The infant will also be affected
by the condition of the mother’s mind. If she is unhappy, easily
agitated, irritable, giving vent to outbursts of passion, the nourishment
the infant receives from its mother will be inflamed, often producing
colic, spasms, and in some instances causing convulsions and fits.