OUR BABIES

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 113, 9 April 1930, Page 3

OUR BABIES

(By Hygeia.) Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). “It is wiser to put up a fence at (ho top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at tho bottom.” MOTHER AND BABY WEEK. The following article consists of extracts from an excellent and most moving broadcast address delivered by Dr C. W. Saleeby on the occasion of tho last English National “Baby Week.” Wo feel that it is worthy of tho widest possible “broadcast,” by any means available, and feel sure our readers will appreciate the wisdom of its teaching and tho sincerity of its ideals. Dr Saleeby said : BEST ON RECORD. “This is the thirteenth .anniversary of Baby Week, and the number is no unlucky one, for wo can record that the. latest figures of infant mortality in our own country are the best on record—6s per 1000 born, as compared with about 150 per 1000 at the beginning of this century. It is my responsible privilege to broadcast for the fourth successive year, on behalf of the National 13aby Wees Council, and this time I have ventured to use for the title of my talk the name which, as some of you may remember, I have always wanted for this occasion—Mother and Baby Week. You may recall my perpetual reasons for this name, winch is particularly appropriate this year. They are perpetual reasons, for they are indeed older than Baby Week, older than civilisation, older even . than mankind. MAN’S EVOLUTIONARY BACKGROUND. “Through vast ages creative evolution has worked along a noble and unprecedented line towards the achievement called man. The line is in the order of mammalia, of which the mothers suckle their young. Along another lino Nature lias achieved the marvels of instinct, which we see in the social insects, ants and wasps and bees; but instinct, though .perfect within limits, is sharply limited, finite, and cannot learn. Intelligence is unlimited, infiinito, can learn to weigh invisible stars and to write ‘Hamlet’ and tire overture to’ ‘Die Meistersinger.’ It is, and will be, what Wordsworth called “Man’s unconquerable mind.” “Now, in order to win by intelligence, we hre necessarily divested of fixed, unlearnt, and unteaehable instincts. Hence the young of tho mammals, and especially the higher mammals, such as tho manlike apes, are born very helpless, and long remain so, whilst they learn. If they are to survive, someone must protect and nourish them, and that someone is the mother who loves them and their helplessness, and would almost have them remain helpless and dependent on her for ever. We human beings are at tlio bead of the order of mammalia,' and hence, on my interpretation of history, wo find that the human mother does more for her infant, and does it longer, than any other, whilst that infant is born the most helpless and remains tho longest, helpless of any living thing.. Yet tliis is the creature, ‘the little brat,’ as a vlugar fool would call it, which is destined to become the ‘paragon of animals,’ as Shakespeare called hi—only ‘a little lower than the angels.’ This contrast between the human infant and the man the erect, little less than demigod, already beginning (and lie is very young yet really) to mould the outer world and even to develop and exalt his own nature ‘nearer to the heart’s desire’ —this contrast is, in ray view, tho most astonishing and impressive paradox in all the universe. It lias never yet, I think, been adequately dealt with either by poets nr by men of science. MADONNA AND MOTHER. “It enhances our estimate of the value of the human mother, and approves the lines of Coleridge: A mother is a mother still, The hqliest thing alive, and it helps us to understand what the students of comparative religion tell us—that ‘mother-and-child worship’ is a central feature of the great historic world' religions. “AVo need in England to-day a modern motlier-and-child worship, as, indeed, I ventured to suggest more than 20 years ago. Let mo quote from the greatest English drama since Shakespeare, ‘The Dynasts,’ by Thomas Hardy. A deserter from Sir John Moore’s army in Spain wants to be home again: ‘Would that I were homo in England again whero there’s oldfasliioned tipple and a proper God A’miglity instead of inis eternal ’Ooman and Baby.’ AVe have some, of tho Madonnas of the great Florentine and Venetian painters and of Raphael in our National Gallery, but surely Protestantism, not in its most austere forms such as Calvinism and Presbyterianism, which denounce mariolatry, has lost something which we might do well to remember, for it would help us to value mother-hood and infancy aright. ONE IN FIFTEEN. “Now let us look at the present state of things. We have learnt how to save many babies. The horrible old epidemics of summer, diarrhoea, do not recur. The la6t was in 1911, though 'there have been hot and dry summers since then.. AVe scarcely ever see a long-tubed feeding bottle; babies’ mijk is tar cleaner than it-used to be, and my slogan of protest in 1902, ‘One in Seven’ is obsolete. ‘One in fifteen’ now is the proportion of babies who do not live to tfie first anniversary of their birthday. But that figure is only very slightly better than others in the past decade, and it would be idle to pretend that we are maintaining the former rate of progress. AVe still fail to save the very young babies in their first' four weeks after birth as we should. This mortality of the new-born, or neo-natal mortality, is practically as high aB ever, and so is the mortality of mothers as a result of childbirth.' And, as I said last year, we begin to see that these two failures are one. Tho very young babies who dio have been poisoned or deprived, or otherwise injured before they were born; and their mothers suffered also, all because our mother-and-baby care lias not been intelligent enough. We ure too lato. Wo have neglected beginnings.- If wo are to save the mothers and the very young babies wo must concentrate on the ante-natal period; as we call it .when wo think of tho baby, or the period of expectancy, as we call it when we think of the mother. _ Let us think of them together, and in time. . » WORDS TO MOTHERS. “Let givey in the fewest words, the best counsel for the expectant mother—for her own sake and for her baby’s. And if any men are listening—condescending to do so, even though, of course, we men really nave minds far above mere squalling brats, wo being naturally at home amid the infinities and high politics, and babies being, mere stuff for mothers’ meetings

—if any of my exalted sex are deigning to listen, perhaps dimly aivaro that if some woman had not, rightly or wrongly, thought them worth saving long ago they would not be here, now, then may I ask them to take a share, as husbands and citizens and voters in national and municipal elections, in the task of making this country of ours more fit for mothers to travail in and babies to be born in? Hero is what .all mothers should have: Good, simple food, with plenty of vitamins; no constipation on any account whatever; their share of sunlight; skilled dental care to protect the teeth and avoid infection and poisoning from tiro mouth; drastic reduction of fats in the food if morning sickness be troublesome; their necessary share of iodine, especially if there be any suspicion of goitre; plenty of rest, little or no standing; open air exercise without fail; quick access to alkalies under medical supervision, if there be any suspicion of danger or strain affecting the kidneys; no alcohol nor tobacco, which threaten the health of the baby. Every expectant mother should consult a doctor who is specially skilled in the hygiene of pregnacy. Before baby comes is the timely time; that is better than the stupid and often deadly haste, the meddlesome midwifery, at which . only too often the mother and the friends and the nurse and the doctor conspire, just when Nature should bo allowed to take her own time. LIFE’S POTENTIALITIES. "Timely forethought, kindly, skilful watching, and then patient skill,i that is what the (mother should have—every mother in the land, whether in a palace or a cottage, whether married or unmarried, whether rich or poor. "It is a new human life coming into the world—perhaps another Joseph Lister or Florence Nightingale or "William. Booth or Sebastian Bach or Louis Pasteur or William Shakespeare. Always there is need of saviours, and always there is hope. May I end by quoting two great poets of our incomparable English tongue—Walt Whitman, the American, and our own Tennyson. Whitman sees the sublime, as the seers and poets and prophets and painters have always seen it, in mother and child, when he Eoints us to ‘the mechanic’s wife, with or babe at }ier nipple, interceding for every person born.’ We must not think that irreverent, if it is new to us, for we all approve the lines which Tennyson, our own Poet Laureate, wrote, now nearly a century ago—lines that live and help us to live this morning: Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old : Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free. The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.”