OUR BABIES.

Waipa Post, Volume IV, Issue 184, 31 January 1913, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

By Hygeia.

Published under the auspices of the Society for the' Health of Women and Children.

GROWING THE TARES.

However, even tares won't flourish on soil unsuited to their growth, and fortunately a single sowing with tainted milk rarely causes grave illness unless the soil (the system of the baby) has been previously prepared for the microbes by some lack of attention to primary hygienic needs. I do not mean that the baby has necessarily been what would be calied ill or even ailing before a severe attack of diarrhoea, but in the majority of cases it would be found, on careful inquiry that at least he had not been doing quite so well as usual for some little time. If the baby had been weighed he would probably have been found not to be growing at the normal rate, due to some irregularity of feeding, excess or deficiency in the food allowance, or unsuitable food. The baby had probably been falling off in spirits and appetite, had been more fretful and restless than usual, and may have been troubled with constipation, colic, or some such sources of discomfort and disturbance of the system. Such conditions predispose to catching diarrhoea just as they predispose to catching cold or getting any other form of illness, and the risk is greatly increased if any of the factors essential for the perfect health and fitness of the baby (not only the food and the feeding) have been receiving insufficient attention. (See What Every Baby Needs. Whether Well or 111, on the first and second pages of the society's books, Feeding and Care of the Baby, and What Baby Needs). The mother is often much surprised when the doctor says " I think your baby has been upset by vour keaping him too much in this stuffy room," or "by not giving him enough outing and exercise," or "by too frequent or irregular feedidg," or "by keeping him too much muffled up," or "by your exposing his poor little bare legs in the go-cart," or " by allowing him to lie sweltering under the canopy of his pram with the sun shining down on it," or "by the use of the long tube feeder or the dummy." The mother replies incredulously, " Oh it can't have been any of those things; he has had the long tube feeder, etc., all along; I have never treated him any different from the beginning, and yoij know how splendidly he has been jtoifig until the last day or two." _^r*'"