OUR BABIES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 2 January 1926, Page 15

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.) I Published under the auspices of the Royal N.Z. Society for tne Health of Women ami Children (Plunket Society.) J PLUNKET NURSES, ETC., DUNEDIN BRANCH. NURSES’ SERVICES FREE. Nurses O’Shea (telephone 2348), Richards, Darling, and Ewart (telephone 11(5), and Mathieson (telephone 3020). . . . Society's Rooms: Jamieson’s Buildings, 7(5 Lower Stuart Street (telephone IHS), and 315 King Edward Street, South Dunedin (telephone- 3020). Office hours, daily from 2 to 4 p.m. (except Saturday and Sunday); also 125 Highgate, Roslvn —Monday and Thursday from 2 to -1 p.m.; and at Kelsey - Yaralla Kinderkarten, Tuesday and Friday, from 2 to 4 p.m. Out -stations: Baptist Church, Gordon Road, Mosgiel, Tuesday afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m.; Municipal Buildings, Port Chalmers. Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 4 o ’clock.

Secretary, Miss G. Hoddinott, Jamieson’s Buildings, Stuart Street (telephone 1.1(5). Karitane-Harris Baby Hospital, Anderson ’s Bay (telephone 1985). Matron, Miss Buisson. Demonstrations given on request every Wednesday afternoou from 2.30 to Nurses and Ivaritane Baby Nurses. Visiting hours: 2 to 4 p.m., Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. We are still continuing the articles issued some years ago, as they are still applicable, and the warnings are still needed.

OVERLYING. A few weeks ago we dealt in several articles with the wrong done to infants through the practice of keeping them in the parents’ bed during the night. These articles were evoked by a c ise in which a young baby had been killed by being overlain in its parents’ bed. The late Mr. G. C. Graham, when holding an inquest on a similar ease nine years ago, said that in England a coroner had gone the length of saying that the practice of mothers taking their babies to oed with them would not be stopped until legislation de dared that the death of an infant by overlying was manslaughter. ANOTHER BABY KILLED.

Another ease of death by overlying lias just been announced —this time Torn Christchurch.

Rita Rebecca Thomas, aged four ' months, was found dead in bed by its mother yesterday morning. At the inquest the coroner returned a verdict that the child had been accidentally suffocated by being overlain, and added a rider that the practice of mothers sleeping with infants was dangerous, and that a separate has si net should be provided. We have no further information with regard to this case. We do not know whether it was ignorance on the part oi the mother, whether she was following he wrong advice of neighbour, friend, „r monthly nurse, or whether she was •Persisting in a wicked practice in spite of skilled advice to the contrary.

THE CRUELTY OF IGNORANCE. Seeing how great a wrong is done to every child who is allowed to swelter iri the warm, damp, vitiated air of the parents’ bed, it is amazing that any mother can now bo found in our midst ;0 indifferent to her child’s health and fitness as to indulge her own mere whim -,j- inclination in this direction. For besides the breathing of foul air, and the frequent half-suffocation, one must take into account also the risk of complete stifling and the sudden violent death of the infant.

QUESTION. How is it that the vice of taking the baby into bed beside the parents still persists in spite of modern facilities for the diffusion of knowledge and the dispelling of prejudice and ignorance? ANSWER. 1. Many adults are well-nigh unteachable, and are so prejudiced and selfsatisfied that nothing will induce them to abandon the errors of the past. One hears daily the same unreasoning: •‘What was good enough for our mothers is good enough for us!” A primary necessity of our education svstem is to thoroughly ingrain into the children in the school the need of plenty of pure, cool, fresh air day and nigiit, and the fact that there is no harm, but infinite good, in pure air, however cool it may be, if only propci clothing be supplied. 2. Some monthly nurses, even more prejudiced than “the mothers them selves, speaking as if with authority, arc most misguided and misguiding in the matter' of fresh air, and often actually advise the mother to keep her baby in bed with her in cold weather. There can be no doubt whatever on this point. The evidence of parents is too clear to admit of any doubt. If the mother acts on such advice, the nurse is, of course, the more guilty of the two. Why on earth should a baby need the animal warmth of the mother for eight hours, when it must do without it for the other 16? Of course, such ad vice *is sheer nonsense.

WIIAT IS VICE? If any question should arise as to the use of the term "vice” or “vicious” us applied to persons who practise or countenance the taking of babies into bed with adults, we have onlv to remind the reader that the word “vice” means the indulgence of the whim, caprice, or inclination of the moment, regardless of future pains and penalties that may be expected to entirely outweigh the pleasure or satisfaction derived from the immediate indulgence. In the ease we are considering the mother not. only yields to a tempo ting vice herself, but she imposes a vicious habit on the sacred charge entrusted to her care, inevitably damaging her baby’s present and future health and strength while at the same time taking upon herself the risk of killing it outright. If this is not “vice,” what is? If such people are not vicious, who are? Indeed, why is the mother who kills her child by overlying not held by law to be a “criminal” and punished as such? If the plea of “not knowing any better’’ and “good intentions” be set up we can only reply that half the vice of the world is the outcome of ignorance; the rest is mainly the outcome of ill-health —bodily, mental, and moral. In any case there is a Duty of Inquiry regarding the needs of babyhood, before the responsibility of parenthood is undertaken. As for the “good inten tions” road, we all know where that leads to.