OUR BABIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17525, 30 April 1925, Page 9

OUR BABIES.

(By JITGEIA.) C • Publish** under the auspice* cr the Royal New Zealand Society for the n Heait.b ot Women and Children, i " It ia Tvi*«r to put up & fence at the tor of a precipice than to maintain an j ambulance at the bottom.” ° ! - A SOUTH AFRICAN FATHER’S '? LETTER. The following letter, notes, and a e chart were forwarded to us by Messrs Macmillan and Co., the publishers of ' j ‘‘Feeding and Care of Baby”:— THE LETTER. !S “My wife and T feel very grateful [ to your society and to Dr Trubv King i for your publications, and, while we ! have been unable to follow the methi ods indicated continuously, we realise ; that lack of skilled advice has no doubt i ! been the cause of the forced resort to t artificial food rendered necessary in our case by the alarming failure of our i infant to put on weight. *‘ We acknowledge with pleasure the obvious good derived from humanised milk, as well as the many valuable suggestions contained in 4 Feeding and Care of Baby,’ and are forwarding the 5 following notes in case they may be of service in other cases. From them you will see that we tried very hard to ad- £ here to humanised milk throughout. i Trusting the accompanying notes will s be of some service to your society.” SOME NOTES ON THE DIET OF 1 3 E K . Born noon March 2, 1924 —Breast. March 2 to March 10 —Partial breast j feeding, due to abscess forming on mo- > tlier’s breast. Cow’s milk and water - given. March la to 30 —Breast. 1 March 30 to May 11, 192-4 —Lactogen. May 11 to June 22 —Humanised milk j ; No. i. June 22 to July IS—Low diet, on account of diarrhoea. > June 27 to July IS—Whole cow’s ' milk. B Julv IS to August 13 —Humanised No. 2. i- August 13 to September I—As1 —As above, a with one teaspoonful of cream added. i September 1 to November 16—Hue manised, modified by test to average of 3.S per cent butter-fat. ! November 16 —Reverted to Lactogen, 1 P lus . a local product called Nutrine. 3 “ On May 11 we first heard of humanf ised milk.. Previously (as shown by posi- £ tions B and C of the curve), the child had been progressing admirably on . Lactogen. Portion F shows the effect j of whole milk. i “On -August 13, on medical advice, I. j we started adding cream to each bottle, 3 i but as it was apparent that we soon ’ reached the point when the child began to refuse food, we started to stand larger quantities of milk t«T bring the resulting mixture up to 3.8 per cent or thereabouts. 1 ‘ Normal humanised milk as the re- > suit of following your recipes only averages 2 per cent in Johannesburg. This is the result of many analyses and » much research on our part, and can be ; taken as quite accurate. It is probably due to Friesland cows being much favoured by the dairymen: their yield ( is high in quantity, but poor in butterfat. “At the same time, the remedying 5 of fat content did not altogether effect the improvement hoped for. and, as we could not obtain skilled advice, we reverted to Lactogen with ; a few modifications.” REMARKS BY MOTHER IN REi TERENCE TO REARING OF , : BABY. “ Weight at birth, Gib 3oz. “ During baby's thirteenth week we went for a holiday, and continued the e humanised milk diet until the sixteenth ° week, when baby had an attack of ° diarrhoea. At the first symptoms I cut 7 of? the food and took all the precautions outlined in your book for thirty- " | six hours. ~ j “On resuming weak humanised milk, ® ' diarrhoea occurred, and was sufficiently „ alarming to justify calling for a doctor. I This doctor prescribed three days’ albuII men and barley water only, and then 3 ; whole milk sterilised in a sealed jar B i (i.e., under pressure). This had the de- ~! sired effect, and was continued for ~ j three weeks, when a return was made I to humanised milk No. 2. e | " About the twenty-fifth week, being | dissatisfied with baby’s appearance, 11 which, while generally healthy enough, undoubtedly appeared to be under--11 nourished, a doctor was again called j in. and ordered the addition of cream , ; to each bottle. For a week or two this ' ' procedure gave encouraging results, * ; but resulted at length in the refusal of I " i the food. . ' My husband then suggested standbig greater quantities of milk to raise ' : the fat content of the resulting human- i J ised recipe, which was conscientiously followed until the poor results in the i direction of weight increase led me to ’ j fry feeding jelly, barley jelly, and ’ ; cereal gruels for one or two ' feeds. | Baby liked it at first, but soon rejected ’ it after several feeds. She dislikes [ spoon-feeding intensely. ! ‘ £ T‘he child is admitted hv doctors to he healthy and normal in every respect- but that of weight and size. No teeth have been cut as yet, and , fov tho last three months her*appetite . has been very small. All normal motions (i.e., except in trie case of illness) have been most regular and satI j A reply was begun regretting that 1 the mother had not had the advice cf a Plunket nurse in the early stages, when no doubt, breast-feeding could have been re-established and carried on throughout the whole nursing per-

iod, etc. This with the South African letter, notes, and chart were submitted to Dr Trilby King, who wrote to our correspondent as follows DR KING’S REPLY. “I have just been shown a letter from yourself concerning your baby, and a partial reply, which is quite in accord with my opinion, though there are several points not drawn attention to which have an important bearing on your difficulties—e.g. : “Tho chart showed that your baby gained no less than lib Goz in tho first fortnight of Lactogen— lGoz a week. Such a gain would be excessive for a normal, full-weight, breast-fed baby per week in its second month, and would be a proof of overfeeding. In tho case of an artificially-fed baby, the overtaxing of the system would be still greater if such a gain in weight were induced. The gain iu the latter case should not exceed lOoz in a fortnight. That the ‘limit of tolerance’ was exceeded at the end of tho firs;t fortnight on Lactogen K shown on the chart by the slight fall in weight (instead of a gain on the fifth week of Lactogen). AVlmt follows is quite characteristic of the aftermath of overfeeding—viz, several months ot digestive disturbance, including diarrhoea. “However carefully the feeding had been conducted, you would have had some difficulty once the digestive and assimilative power of the child had I been seriously overtaxed; but the • duration of disturbance would not j have been long if you had had tho ' advice and help of a Y’imiket nurse, i “lb was quite a mistake to change suddenly from a super-heated dried milk to any unboiled fresh milk preparation, such as humanised milk. A lew weeks’ restriction to super-heat-ed milk makes the average baby quite j incapable of dealing satisfactorily with an unboiled milk, and in such cases we make the change very gradually, boiling the milk for at lease a quarter of an hour at first, and feeling our way very cautiously for fear cf causing a further upset. When the baby’s digestive organs first struck on account of overwork, they should have been given a complete holiday (no food, only boiled water) for a day. and then humanised milk (made with v-ell-hoiled milk) j diluted with at least twice its volume | of water coTUI have been tried. Nu atteinnt should have been made to make the baby gain weight for a week or two at least.”