OUR BABIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17905, 22 July 1926, Page 12

OUR BABIES.

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 the top of a precipico than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” LET BABY SLEEP. WHEN MOTHER MAY BE SELFISH Why don t von let baby sleep?” I was foolish enough to ask a young friend as we sat by her parlour fire. It was nearly ten o’clock, and baby, six months old,' after a bout of crying’ was deliciously curling and uncurling her little toes and lifting her rosv, rounded limbs in front of a cosy lire! Baby’s mother loked at me reproachfully. "As if r wouldn't be thankful if she would,” she said. . Whatever do you mean? I’ve tried all sorts of things, but she won’t sleep. She's such a bright, clever wee dear, all nerves, you know. The least thing startles her out of her sleep, and she won’t go over again.” But suppose,” I went on, even more foolishly to suggest, “that baby were in an institution ” “But she isn’t. Oh! what a naughty, horicl auntie my darling little Rosie has,” and she tickled baby till she shrieked with delight. What I wanted to say was that in a creche or under the care of a skilled nurse Rosie would not have been treated as a “nervous” child, but simply as a baby like all other babies. She would have had food and sleep at regular hours. When she cried to be gathered up and cuddled, she would have been taken up and soothed and promptly laid clown again, until she learned that sleeping was her job at that hour, not listening to mother singing lullabies beside her cot and not entertaining company before the ; parlour fire. Rosie’s mother would reply, no i doubt, that her baby would never exist if reared in such cold. mechanical ways. Besides if she slept all evening she's awake too early in the morning. So she is bathed and put to bed at half-past live, leaving muvnmie free to make tea before daddy comes home. Tf she did wake up at 7 and spend the rest of the evening in the parlour, daddy was rested by that time, and thev both enjoyed the little pet and her pretty ways. THE DIFFICULT WAY. Could one dare to tell Rosie’s mother that she was thinking of her own convenience and pleasure and not of the child’s welfare? If she had trained baby to lie still and not to demand constant attention or amusement, she could have made daddv's tea before bath time, and tucked baby up at an hour when she could have slept a round of the clock without waking tiil a reasonable morning hour. If she had made it a fixed rule that no visitors should intrude after bed-time, the l>abv should never be lifted merely to be amused, and never under any circumstances taken from one room to another, she (the mother) would have had some difficult weeks of training, but baby would have been rewarded by calm nights of sound, healthgiving sleep. If baby had been properly trained she will sleep through the ordinary household noises. Even the gramophone, the loud speaker, or the piano will not disturb her. Those very “nerves” which seem to a proud mother the sign of a highly-strung, sensitive temperament, are probably the result of bad training, broken sleep, and the stimulating of the infant at an hour when she should have been fast asleep. Let baby form the habit of sound sleep from her birth onwards. Otherwise she will become the tyrant of the house till another baby comes to learn the same tricks—and she will lose the precious gift of sleep during those years when it should be helping to form sound nerves and a healthy j constitution.