OUR BABIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3100, 13 August 1913, Page 57

OUR BABIES.

By Hygeia.

Published under the auspices of the Society ior the Health ol Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a lence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.”

PRE-NATAL CARE. The importance of pre-natal care was emphasised at the annual meeting of the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality. Mrs William Lowell Putnam, tho chairwoman of the Women's Municipal League, of Boston, writes:

“ It was to demonstrate what gain would result from pre-natal care that tho league began its experiment in April, 1909. The results have proved so satisfactory that last year the Boston Lying-in Hospital established a prenatal clinic, with a visiting nurse, to carry on the work previously done for their house patients by the league. The Boston Board of Health also began in 1911 to send nurses throughout tho city to care for mothers and babies before as well as after birth.

“ Tho principle of tho league has boon that pregnancy is a normal function, and should not only bo entered upon, but carried through, under as normal conditions us possible—not in a rest house, but in the woman’s house, —and that if the home conditions are wrong the remedy lies not in removing tho woman, but in improving the home. The number of patients cared for thus far has been between 1200 and 1300, and they have been ordinary women living under ordinary conditions. -Most of them are of tho working class, which has but little or no margin in money matters, dependent wholly on daily work for daily bread.

“ They have cornc under the care of the league in various ways —reported by maternity hospitals, dispensaries, charitable agencies, and individuals, and a few by private physicians. Wo insist that all shall bo under medical care, for neither nurse nor layman should assume medical responsibility. “ The routine of the committee calls for a visit at least every 10 days, however well the patient may bo, and, if anything untoward arises, visits are made as much oftener as may be. necessary. The nurse advises the patient with regard to diet, clothing, fresh air, the free use of water both for drinking and bathing, rest, recreation, and work; but she never goes beyond these natural safeguards or trespasses on medical preserves further than to prescribe cascara internally or to strap an aching back for external relief. At every visit she takes the blood pressure and makes certain tests, in the hope of thus warding off cases of possible eclampsia. The statistics of the blood pressure are kept on carefully-pre-pared charts. “The result of the care in reducing the number of cases which show symptoms of threatened eclampsia, or Bright’s disease, as the layman calls it, has been most gratifying. During the first year of this work the percentage of cases which showed symptoms of this dreaded disease was 10.2 per cent, of the total number cared for. The second year this was reduced to 4.8 per cent., and last year to only 1.7 per cent. —this with a constantly increasing number of patients “In the first year there wore two miscarriages, only one in the second, and none in the past two years. The percentage of still births has been 2.7 per cent., as against a usual average of 3.8 per cent, where no pre-natal care has been given. The babies born prematurely are also relatively few—2.l per cent, of the total number. " Counting even those premature infants, the average birth weight of the babies for the full term of the work has been 7lb Bjoz, and for the last year 7ib 15oz.

“ The patients arc under the caro of the committee on an average between two and throe months, but many have been cared for six or seven months, and in one case for the full term. This length of care is what is most desired, for it enables the patients, both mother and baby, to avoid many pitfalls. “ The patients are almost without exception grateful for the help and comfort given them by the nurses’ visits, and many of them are thoroughly appreciative. . . .

Often she has a chance to correct old wives’ tales poured into the ears of her patients by neighbours whoso qualifications for the position of adviser are like those of the old woman found by a settlement nurse feeding her grandchild by hanging a fountain syringe full of milk from the mantelpiece and putting the end of the tube in the baby’s mouth ns it lay in its basket on tlie floor. This process had the result that should have been expected, and to the nurse’s objections the grandmother replied, ‘ Shouldn’t I know how to feed a baby ; havent’s I buried fourteen?’ “ Besides this work amongst the mothers, the committee is trying to lower the rale of infant mortality by persuading the Boston (School Committee to introduce teaching in the care of babies into the regular curriculum for girls of the seventh and eighth grades of the grammar schools. Not only would it help the babies of to-day, for these girls are the little mothers to whom the care of the baby is often confided by the overworked mother; but the babies of the next generation would profit even more, for the future mothers would not then start with an ignorance so crass us only to be believed when seen. This teaching would mean an oven earlier start than pre-natal care, and yet it does not supersede it, for nothing can ever do that, not even eugenics, when it shall have become exalted and glorified.”

It is gratifying to know that our Plunket Nurses are working in the same direction, and that a largo and increasing number of expectant mothers are visited and helped with genera! advice. The people in this Dominion arc greatly indebted to the Government for publishing such a valuable hook as Baby’s First Month, copies of which can bo obtained free of charge on application to the registrar of births in every town in New Zealand.

It is interesting to read in the Home cables that at the Conference on Infant Mortality, now sitting in London, and at which many of the world’s eminent doctors are present. Dr Trilby King’s paper on “New Zealand’s Efforts to Reduce the Infant Mortality” is mentioned by the papers. and that they commend the example and lesson to the Motherland.