Feeding the Pregnant and Nursing Mother

There is no time in the life of a woman when food is of so much importance as during the time of her pregnancy and when nursing her babe.

Food determines the strength and vitality, the mental tranquility, the physical comfort or discomfort that comes from good or poor digestion. It controls more than any other one thing, the thoughts and imagina­tion ; that is, under a perfect system of feeding, the pro­spective mother forgets self and her mind turns natur­ally to the higher, the better and the nobler things. All of these things leave their imprint upon the embryotic being and wield a powerful influence over its future destiny.

The pregnant mother should bestow upon her diet the most infinite study if she would give to her offspring those splendid faculties which every mother desires.

Owing to the various pursuits and ages of mothers and the climatic conditions of their environment, spe­cific instructions in regard to diet could not be given here. This would require the care and advice of a specialist.

The fundamental laws governing diet during ma­ternity, however, can be laid out in the form of classi­fications and omissions.

All flesh foods contain uric acid and other toxic poisons, which added to similar poisons produced by the human body inflict a special burden upon the organs of elimination. In addition to these reasons, meat con­tains no element of nutrition which cannot be secured in a better and purer form from other sources, there­fore it is wholly unnecessary, in fact, a violation of natural law to burden the mother body with poisons and non-nutritive substances in order to secure the common elements of protein and fat which can be had from a dozen vegetable sources in their purest and most delicious form.

Stimulants should be eliminated from the pregnant mother's diet; first, because they produce no energy; and second, because they irritate and excite the millions of infinitely small nerve fibers to a point above par, and when the effect is gone the nervous system is dropped below par, and this constant raising and low­ering process deranges the nervous system of the mother and leaves its baneful impression upon the body and brain of another being.

The over-consumption of starch foods should be carefully avoided because the calcareous element in starch is apt to produce a large structural or bone for­mation in the child, making it exceedingly difficult of delivery and sometimes out of the proper physical pro­portion.

The food of the pregnant mother should consist of vegetables, all green and succulent plants that are edi­ble, thoroughly ripened fruit, nuts, milk (fresh or clabbered), eggs and a limited quantity of coarse bread, made from the entire grain. She should avoid pastries and especially an excess of articles containing cane sugar, confections and soda-fount drinks.

The prospective mother should take a reasonable amount of exercise daily, a great deal of deep breath­ing in the open air and should masticate every particle of food she swallows to infinite fineness. She should remember that every movement of the body from the winking of an eye to the most strenuous labor con­sumes energy. From these spent forces there are poisons left in the body that must be eliminated in order to be healthy.

The health of the nursing infant is controlled almost wholly by the mother's food. It is not extravagant to say that the frightful loss of infant life given in Chap­ter on Infant Mortality could be reduced seventy-five per cent, if mothers understood and would observe the few simple laws that govern the conversion of their food into mother's milk suitable for the healthy growth of infant life.

There is a popular superstition that every infant must pass through what is known as "the three months' colic." This period of infant suffering begins about one week after birth, that is to say, as soon as the mother begins to eat, and lasts until the infant diges­tion becomes inured to the omnivorous, thoughtless and abominable compounds that compose the mother's diet, or until the little one has succumbed to stomach trouble, inflammation of the intestines or cholera in-fantum.

The attending physician usually gives some vague and careless suggestions about diet, winding up his lightly considered instructions with that most pleasing advice, "Oh, eat what agrees with you."

This is about as valuable to the mother as the ad­vice given to the reforming drunkard by the patent pill vendor who advised him to "Drink what you like and take my pills." What he liked was the very thing that had proved his undoing, likewise what the average nursing mother likes most is the conventional bill-of-fare, pork, pickles and pastry.

The food of the nursing mother should be con­fined to rather narrow limitations. She can secure cer­tain food articles which contain all the elements of nourishment she needs and which will give to her child all it needs and in no wise disturb its digestion or en­danger its life, from a few of Nature's most staple and most delicious things.

The nursing mother should omit from her diet all stimulating, narcotic and sedative beverages such as tea, coffee, beer, wine and liquors. She should avoid ex­tremes, both acids and sweets. She should omit all forms of flesh food except young tender fish or the white or bloodless portion of chicken, and these need only be taken to relieve dietetic monotony or when such proteid foods as eggs, milk and legumes cannot be obtained. Con­sidering the requirements of the baby, the mother's food should consist of fresh vegetables, green salads (omitting vinegar), nuts, semi-acid and sweet fruits, milk, eggs and a limited quantity of starch foods and natural sweets, such as bread made from the entire grain, either wheat or rye, dates, figs or raisins.

One of the most important things for the mother to preserve is mental and physical tranquility. The mother should not nurse her child while laboring under any mental disturbance or excitement such as anger or fright, or any physical conditions such as fatigue or while over-heated.
If the diet of the pregnant or nursing mother were selected from the articles herein named, properly com­bined and proportioned, thoroughly masticated, and if she could be induced to devote fifteen minutes night and morning to vigorous exercise in the open air and to filling the lungs to their utmost capacity with good, fresh ozone a few hundred times a day, it would be almost impossible for either the mother or child to be­come afflicted with abnormal conditions we are pleased to- call disease.

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