CHAPTER XVI. CONVENIENT METHODS FOR RAISING INFANTS WITHOUT THE BREAST.
A small bottle holding an ounce, for the first, should be in readiness; a smooth round hole made in the cork, through which to put a quill; the whole to be well covered with a strong soft linen, the edges of which should be hemmed and securely tied under the lip of the bottle. This constituted a sucking-bottle of fifty years ago. The modern rubber tube and nipple, if composed of healthy material, removed from the mouth and washed as soon as possible after using, may do as well. If a child is allowed to sleep all it naturally inclines to, four ounces of milk or two of cream will suffice it during the day, say from seven or eight o’clock in the morning until six in the evening. From that time until bed-time, say nine or ten o’clock, half as much. After ten, the feeding should be as seldom as will allow of comfort. In this way, one pint of milk or half a pint of pure cream will be sufficient to last a babe of from one to four weeks old, a whole day, allowing the cream to be increased to nearly a pint by watering. The quantity should be increased gradually, while the number of meals during the night should decrease. By these means a babe will soon cease to be any trouble after bed hours. Only remember that it has nerves, through which it is supplied with feelings.
A small bottle insures renewal of the food, for positively the same milk that a child has tried to draw from a bottle for any length of time is not fit to be re-warmed or offered to it again; and if persisted in, will act as a slow poison, which may develop into cholera at any period of infantile existence. Again, if milk flows evenly, the butter globules do not form in the bottle. If the milk flows too fast into the child’s mouth, the healthful benefits of a meal is lost.
I have often seen mothers force, with apparent anger, great spoonfuls down the throats of their babes; perhaps such would think this cruel if done by a nurse or overburdened servant-girl.
If a child has cold in the head, so that the nostrils are stopped, means should be used at once to clear them. No one can swallow properly with the nostrils stopped up. To remove the cause daily will prevent those sickening accumulations. A strict attention to cleanliness, and frequent applications of sweet oil, or lard, or goose oil, with a feather, is all that is wanting to prevent so many cases of sore noses, terminating in the entire loss of smell, and not unfrequently the destruction of the soft bones of the nose, or even the cause of cancer. Feeding during the night should be discontinued as soon as possible, as it is then that mistakes of giving the food too hot or too cold are liable to occur. Night feeding may only be avoided by encouraging babes to keep awake during the evening. But if they must be put to sleep early in the evening, as a rule, to suit some one’s convenience, it may be expected that, as a rule, they will wake up just when other people are sleepy, and desire some notice. Infants from three months old and upward will thrive well on a pint and a half of milk a day, but will get on much faster if fed with rolled compound cracker and milk during the day. It is needful to give some babes fluids only, while others starve on them. It is the continual emptiness that causes many children to fret and whine; for whatever they smell, cooking excites their appetites more or less as they grow in intelligence. And, too, children take appetites from their parents in a marked degree. As a doctress, I never could feel it justifiable to direct any woman to wean her babe on account of any conceited inability on her part to suckle it.