Infant Feeding

AND GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND CARE OF CHILDREN VOLUMES have been written upon this subject, laborious analyses have been made, tables have been compiled, terms in chemistry have been severely drawn upon to explain things; the efforts of all these writers, no doubt, were inspired by the noblest purposes, nevertheless amid their citations, tables and learned technicalities the average mother stands bewild­ered and must perforce turn back to common sense, experience and motherly instinct. It is here that every mother should have some knowledge of the chemistry of food. She should know something about selecting and combining such things as are in chemical harmony. She should know something about the requirements of the infant body and in what particular respect it dif­fers from that of the adult. If she is nursing she should have some idea about the process of metabolism in her own body and the consequent effects of certain foods upon her babe. If the infant is bottle fed she should understand the simple laws governing the qual­ity and quantity of milk to be administered. If it has passed the weaning stage it is of great importance that she know the rules of graduating the nutrition from infancy to childhood and from child­hood to youth.

In order to have practical and useful knowledge of these things it is not necessary for the mother to be­come a chemist or food scientist or spend much time in studying what seems at first to be an intricate scientific problem comprehensible only to the trained student; quite to the contrary, with a little thought and study devoted to the fundamental laws of food chemistry, chemical harmony and the requirements of the grow­ing child, this knowledge comes to the mother as readily and naturally as instinct in all mother life throws its protecting arms about its young.
The following are general rules for feeding the in­fant from birth to about one year of age.

These rules cannot be made accurate, because all children differ in temperament, vitality and pre-natal influences, but if the mother will observe these in­structions with reasonable care her child can be brought healthfully through the most critical period of its life and enter the solid food age with good digestion, a strong body and a splendid chance to withstand all children's diseases.

Every mother should endeavor to feed herself so as to nourish her baby from the breast, if possible, but where this cannot be done and artificial feeding be­comes necessary, then the preparation of the baby food is of primary importance.

Cow's milk is, of course, the logical food, but taken whole, that is, the entire milk, it is too high in pro-teids and deficient in sugar, therefore, in order to make a healthy infant food it must be modified according to the requirements of the infant body.

The nurse or mother should prepare an amount suf­ficient for only one day's supply at a time after the fol­lowing formula:

Cream 2 oz.
Milk  2 oz.
Water 15 oz.
Milk Sugar 4 level teaspoons
Lime Water 2 teaspoons or 1/2ounce
This should be thoroughly mixed, placed in the bot­tle, and set in warm water until it is brought to the temperature of breast milk. The above formula can be used during the first month of baby's life:
Amount and frequency of feedings according to the following table:
Age. Feedings. Ounces. Intervals.
1st day  5 to 6  1  3 or 4 hours
2nd day 7 to 8  1  2 1/2 to 3 hours
3rd to 7th day 9 to 10 1 1/4 2 to 2 1/2 hours
2d, 3rd, 4th weeks 10 2 to 3 2 hours
Formula for second and third months:
Cream  3 1/2 oz.
Milk  I 1/2 oz.
Water 14 oz.
Milk Sugar  5 teaspoonsful
Lime Water  2 1/2 teaspoonsful

Amount and frequency of feedings should be about as follows:

Months. Feedings. Ounces. Intervals.
2nd and 3rd. 7 to 8 3 to 4 2 or 3 hours
Formula for fourth to twelfth months:
Cream <  6 to 8 ounces
Milk  2 to 3 "
Water 10
Milk Sugar  5 to 6 teaspoonsful
Lime Water  2 to 3 "
Amount and frequency of feedings should be about as follows:
Months. Feedings. Ounces. Intervals.
4th, sth and 6th 5 to 6 4 to 6 3 to 1/2hours
7th, 8th and 9th  5 6 to 7 4 to 4 1/2 hours
10th, nth and 12th... 5 6 to 8 4 to 4 1/2 hours

The above formulas for Infant Food are the best that can be made from ordinary cow's milk.

My Vieno Baby Food, however, is superior to cow's milk and where it can be obtained it should be prepared according to my recipes and administered in same quan­tity and at the same intervals as the modified milk in above formulas.

If the Vieno Baby Food cannot be obtained from your druggist, see page 183. The milk, sugar and lime water herein named can be purchased at any first class drug store.

These tables are not given as exact. The mother should exercise careful vigilance and judgment, especially in reference to the quantity of each feeding and the frequency. The moment the child shows symptoms of over-feeding, which are usually expressed by vomit­ing or discomfort, the quantity of cream and the amount at each feeding should be reduced. In fact, it is health­ful and often necessary to allow the child an oppor­tunity to get hungry. The digestion of many a baby is totally ruined by continuous feeding which is done out of motherly sympathy or to merely keep it quiet.

The mother or nurse should exercise great care in the cleanliness and hygienic preparation of infants' foods. Milk should be fresh and of the very best. It should not be left uncovered or exposed. It should be kept continually on ice until ready for use. The cream used should be taken from the top of a bottle or from fresh milk. This insures better quality of butter fat than Is generally supplied in ordinary commercial dairy cream.

The majority of bottle-fed children suffer greatly from constipation caused largely by the milk or the failure to modify the milk properly or make it con­tain the constituent elements of breast milk. This condition can be relieved by giving the child, every night and morning, sweet orange juice or the juice from soaked prunes preferred. This should be administered in quantities ranging from a dozen drops to two or three teaspoonfuls, according to the age of the child and the severity of the condition.

Intestinal congestion can often be relieved, however, by giving the abdomen gentle massage, preferably in a rotary or spherical motion.

All infants need some exercise, they should be gently rubbed and rolled about after the morning bath, before they are dressed. There is nothing more healthful than exposure of the baby skin to fresh air in a normal temperature.

Next in importance to the food of the infant is its clothing. The usual custom of dressing a baby the first three months of its life, is positively barbaric, not that it imitates uncivilized people, but because it evi­dences the grossest ignorance and crudest vanity. The mother seems to have no way of expressing her pride in her child except to decorate it. This decoration usually consists of three long skirts, two of them at­tached to bands which are fastened around the body. The weight of this clothing prevents the free use of the baby's feet and legs and therefore, puts it in a kind of civilized straight jacket, depriving it of exercising or moving the only part of its anatony that it can freely exercise.

It is nothing uncommon to see a beautiful baby, sore, irritated and broken out with heat all over its little body by heavy envelopes of barbaric rags.

The child, therefore, is made to suffer merely that it may please a proud mother and conform to an ignorant custom a thousand years old.

The only purpose clothing should serve is bodily warmth; when it is made the instrument of painful decoration it is serving the same purpose as rings in the ears and bells on the toes, and the mind of the mother who thus afflicts her child is in the same class as that of the ignorant barbarian whom she imitates.

Infants should be put in short skirts, attached to bodies suspended from the shoulders; everything should be made to contribute to comfort. This is a duty we owe to the little one whose only way of protesting against our cruelty is to kick and cry.

While the baby is under the care of the mother or nurse its diet can be and is usually controlled—it is after it is walking and talking that what it eats so com­pletely governs its health.

Children are naturally healthier than their parents. The trend of Nature is upward toward higher and higher forms of life, therefore, if the principle of nat­ural evolution were not in some way interfered with, babies, with very few exceptions, would be perfectly healthy and their comparative death rate would be lower than among adults.

The child's taste or desire for certain things cannot be trusted. All children crave sweets, yet their bodies can only use and dispose of a limited amount. Every pennyweight of sugar taken in excess of that which is needed becomes a source of trouble.

Cheap confections, especially "penny suckers" and all that class of things, should be prohibited by law. From long experience we are justified in saying that cheap confections and over-eating of sweets are the most prolific causes of children's diseases. These things may not be the direct cause, but when disease appears and attacks the little body it has no power of resist­ance and the child succumbs.

The craving of sweets can be satisfied by natural things such as dates, figs or raisins, and now and then a little pure maple sugar or a pure home-made con­fection, but these should be administered sparingly and governed by the amount of open air exercise, tempera­ture of the atmosphere and the mother's good judg­ment.

The child's bed-room should be kept thoroughly ven­tilated, cold and crisp even in winter, care being exer­cised that the little one does not become uncovered and exposed.

Children can withstand a great amount of cold. The blood of the healthy child is thick with the red corpus­cles, and when allowed to romp and play it will be com­fortable out in zero weather, thinly clad compared with the amount of clothing worn by the adult.

In a great majority of cases, probably ninety per cent, when a child becomes ill the cause can be traced directly to what it has eaten, therefore, to give it drugs or the average children's medicines under these con­ditions is a little less than criminal.

Drugs do not remove causes, but they interfere most seriously with Nature in her effort so to do.

When a child becomes ill, or its temperature rises above normal, it should first be given an enema to remove congestion of the lower bowels and followed by a light natural laxative fruit juice, such as strained orange juice, juice of soaked evaporated apricots or prunes. It should drink copiously of water and abstain entirely from food. Under this treatment the abnormal symp­toms are very apt to disappear and the child will be better and healthier for the short abstinence from food, while the anxiety of the mother will be relieved, the family purse conserved and the child freed from the ignorant practice of drug poison.

These suggestions are intended as a guide for the nurse or mother in caring for the average normal child, if, however, the infant or youth should become ill or show signs of gradual decline, its care should be sub­mitted to a specialist, preferably to someone who un­derstands the art of child-feeding or infant hygiene.

If the mother would devote some of her time to studying nature and the wants of her child, depending more upon good mother sense than upon artificial reme­dies, drug stores and doctors, the peal of happy laugh­ter would come from the door of many a home where hangs the white crepe as an emblem of civilized ignorance.

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