CHAPTER XIII.TIME FOR WEANING.
It is claimed, and no doubt rightfully, that it is the children of the poorer classes who suffer most in large cities from bowel complaints. To this too many are ready to say, “Amen.”
But there are duties involving upon each and all, rich or poor, from which none can expect tobe excused till the last known part has been performed. As the chances now appear, there need be no lack of the common comforts of life in most of our large cities and towns. This is a land of opportunities; in it the laborer gets, or should get, his hire. It therefore becomes his privilege to aid by prudence, industry, and economy, in elevating his family to the discouragement of pauperism and wilful neglect of the laws of health.
It very often happens that those very persons, who claim to be too poor to obtain the necessary comforts of life for their little ones, will not hesitate to purchase some extortionately high-priced article, for which they must enslave themselves to pay by the week or month, and which is of far less value than their own or their children’s health. I would suggest here that an extra ten-cent piece be deposited in safe keeping each day as a surety for a baby’s comforts for the first six months; which should afterward be increased to twenty cents a day, and thus continued during its childhood.
When a child is five or six months old, it is best to begin to feed once or twice a day, so that the weaning may not be too suddenly enforced upon it. Bread, crumbled in a small quantity of milk, corn-meal pudding, mutton or chicken broth, Graham biscuit; very little salt added to theporridges is healthy. But no disagreeable substances, such as aloes, pepper or salt, should be applied to the nipples for the purpose of weaning a child; a plaster of wool or fur is more safe for the health of the child.
In this climate (Massachusetts) there are many families who fear to wean their children at any season of the year; many of them migrating from a climate less variable, and in which the customs of feeding infants are altogether different. Such mothers are deserving of no small share of sympathy. I am acquainted with hundreds of them; thank God there are some good mothers, good enough to take the blame upon themselves should their infants sicken and die after being weaned. But for all such there may be found in this little cabinet a consoling word.
Weaning is advisable before June and before December. But if a child does not thrive by reason of some constitutional weakness of the mother, it could probably rally faster by being fed otherwise, at any season of the year.
But whether a child is weakly or not it can gain nothing by continuing to suck after the ninth month; therefore, weaning is recommended about this period. If the mother breeds fast, a prolonged season of nursing but keeps her unprepared, both in strength and household matters, for the next. Then, too, it retards the healthy developmentof the new being, should she become pregnant while nursing. Although the mother’s milk is essential to the proper growth of the child, history records evidences of noble-minded men and women who never nursed the breast, yet lived to a great age.
A great deal depends upon circumstances; for instance, it may be that even with apparently nutritive milk, the bones remain soft, the joints weak, and the flesh wastes away or remains the same. Such cases are not uncommon, especially among the very hard-working people or real indigent. Hence the necessity of seeking medical advice as to the best possible means of supplying the blood with those principles apparently lacking.
From my experience as nurse, I can say that weaning from the breast may be successfully accomplished if begun pleasantly, but decidedly, and continued. The months of May and October in the New England States are the most favorable; April and November in the Middle States, while in almost all of the Southern States weaning is advisable in March and November or December.
Waiting for a child to get all of its teeth is merely a matter of choice. Beside the inconvenience of the differences in the periods of time when the teeth get through, there is an unnecessary drain on the system of the mother, with no benefit whatever to the child.
The efforts put forth by some women to retard child-bearing is not so good as “Robbing Peter to pay Poll,” because in such cases Peter is robbed, but Polly is never paid. So it seems to me that if these little ones are given in quick succession, it is just as well to have them and get through with it. Many are the women who have borne a dozen or more children into the world, and afterwards filled positions of nobility and trust.
By taking particular notice which course is best to pursue with a child of seven or nine months, I sincerely believe the large number of infantile deaths, under one year, would be much less.
Deferring weaning for the predominance of some certain sign in the heavens, does not accord with our present progress in knowledge.