Constipation

The stools of natural, healthy children should be bright yellow and perfectly smooth. If grainy and soft, food should be made richer. If in curds, it evidences too much protein, therefore the milk should be reduced. If the stools are white and oily, it indicates an excess of cream.

If hard and dry, it indicates an insufficient amount of cream. If green, reduce the quantity of milk, or omit it altogether, and increase the quantity of barley-water.

The majority of bottle-fed children suffer greatly from constipation, caused largely by the milk, or the failure to modify the milk properly, or to make it contain the constituent elements of breast-milk. This condition can be relieved by giving the child sweet orange juice every night and morning, or the juice from soaked prunes, if preferred. This should be administered in quantities ranging from a dozen drops to two or three teaspoonfuls, according to the age of the child and the severity of the condition. Intestinal congestion can often be relieved, however, by giving the abdomen gentle massage, preferably with a rotary or kneading motion.

In cases of diarrhea, infants from three to eight months old should be given first an enema, and then a diet entirely of boiled milk mixed with rice or barley-water.

Exercise

All infants need some exercise. They should be gently rubbed and rolled about after the morning bath, before they are dressed. There is nothing more healthful than exposure of the baby-skin to fresh air in a normal temperature.

Clothing

Next in importance to the food of the infant is its clothing. The usual style of dressing babies the first three months of their lives is positively barbaric; not that it imitates uncivilized people, but because it evidences the grossest ignorance and cruelest vanity. The mother seems to have no way of expressing her pride in her child except by bedecking it with elaborate garments. These usually consist of three long skirts, two of them attached to bands which are fastened around the body. The weight of this clothing prevents the free use of the baby's feet and legs, putting it into a kind of civilized strait-jacket, thus preventing it from exercising the only part of its anatomy that it can freely move.

It is nothing uncommon to see a beautiful baby sore, irritated, and broken out with heat all over its little body by being heavily enveloped in barbaric rags. The child, therefore, is made to suffer merely that it may please a proud mother, and conform to an ignorant custom a thousand years old.

The only purpose clothing should serve is that of bodily warmth. When it is made the instrument of painful adornment it is serving the same purpose as "rings in the ears and bells on the toes," and the mind of the mother who thus afflicts her child is in the same class as that of the ignorant barbarian whom she imitates.

Temperature Of Baby's Food

It should be remembered that all liquid food for a child up to twelve or fifteen months old should be administered at a temperature no lower than blood-heat. The liquid mixtures named herein may be made in advance of the needs, and placed upon ice merely to preserve them, but should be warmed to a temperature of at least ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit before administering to the child.

Pure water should be given to all children from the time they are two weeks old.

Bandage

The bandage should be removed about the close of the third month.

Emaciation

In case of slight emaciation or lack of fat, the child should be given an olive-oil rub once or twice a week, rubbing gently into the skin about one teaspoonful of oil.

General Instructions For Children After One Year

All children, whether breast-fed or bottle-fed, are subject to practically the same health rules after they are about one year old. Therefore I will now consider all children in the same class, and lay out for them what may be termed general instructions in health and hygiene.

Care should be exercised to omit from the diet of children just beginning to take solid food, all articles that will not dissolve readily without mastication.

General Diet From Ages One To Two

The diet from the first to the second year should consist of:

Baked apples

Baked potatoes - sweet or white

Cereal - limited quantity (thoroughly cooked)

Cream soups - home-made, such as:

Cream of celery Potato Tomato, etc.

Onion Rice

Eggs

Milk

Pulp of soft ripe fruits

Vegetables - thoroughly mashed, such as:

Fresh

Asparagus Corn Peas Squash

The above vegetables contain much cellulose or pulp which should be entirely discarded, leaving only the meat or purée; but to the child from eleven to fifteen months old, they should be administered in very limited quantities.

Simplicity In Feeding

Especial attention should be given to simplicity in feeding:

1 Avoid giving too many things at the same meal; from three to four articles at one time are sufficient

2 Mothers should be especially cautioned against giving a child bread made with yeast, or baking powder, and against the old diet of milk toast

3 All meat, flesh food, stimulants or narcotics of every kind should be omitted from the diet of children

4 The crowning mistake of the doting mother is often made in feeding her child from the conventional table, on such things as weakened coffee or tea, meats, and condiments

5 The custom of giving children an excess of sweets has ruined millions of little stomachs, and has given them a heritage of disease and suffering before they have filtered their 'teens

6 All condiments, such as pepper, salt, vinegar, pickles, and all pungent things should be eliminated from the diet of children - the taste of the child is very susceptible to cultivation, and with very little encouragement it will accept things that have no place in the human economy, and which are positively harmful

7 When a child begins teething, it may be given a small piece of hard water-cracker with safety

If the above rules are observed, it is reasonable to assume that normal hunger of the child will guide it very correctly in selecting, proportioning, and combining its food through the period of childhood until it enters the period of youth.