I cannot tell you all my sufferings during the time of motherhood. I thought, like hundreds of women to-day, that it was only natural, and that you had to bear it. I had three children and one miscarriage in three years.
The secret revolt and bitterness which permeates every fibre of the unwillingly pregnant and suffering mothers has been finding its expression in the lives and deeds of their children. We have been breeding revolutionaries through the ages and at an increasing rate since the crowding into cities began, and women were forced to bear children beyond their strength and desires in increasingly unnatural conditions.
Also since women have heard rumours that such enslaved motherhood is not necessary, that the wise know a way of keeping their motherhood voluntary, the revolt in the mother has become conscious with consequent injury to the child.
Increasingly, the first of baby's rights is to be _wanted_.
Concerning baby's right to be fed on the food that nature supplies, or if that fails on the very nearest substitute that can be discovered, there are to-day so many who urge that an infant shall be fed by its own mother, that it is perhaps needless to repeat arguments so impressive. Nevertheless, perhaps it is as well to remind young mothers of two or three of the most vital facts. The first is that no artificial substitute, however perfectly prepared and chemically analysed, can possibly give those very subtle constituents which are found in the mother's own milk and which vary from individual to individual. These probably are in the nature of the vitamines now so well known in fresh food, but they are something more specifically individual than can be scientifically detected. The fresh milk of its own mother has a peculiar value to the child which is greater than that of any foster mother.
For this reason alone, were it the only one, every young mother should nurse her own baby if possible; but, on the other hand, to-day it not infrequently happens that the mother may have an apparent flow of milk, quite sufficient for the infant in quantity, but that milk may be devoid of the necessary supply of fat or sugars or some other ingredient for complete nutriment. When this is so, it is often wisest to allow the mother to nurse the child partly and to supplement its diet by other milk.