p. 15 | Do You “Overwork” Your Baby? by A. M. Hughes, M. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 30, 1916

Do You “Overwork” Your Baby?

By A. M. Hughes, M. D.

If your baby is fretful, cries too much, does not keep down his milk as he should, and is becoming thin and pale, the chances are very great that you are overworking him.

“Overworking” is a phrase of my own, and needs a little explanation. By it I mean that you try to amuse the baby too much, or perhaps you are amusing yourself under the guise of amusing him. The best way to make clear just what I mean is to relate an actual experience (and there are altogether too many of such experiences) which I saw in a home whose pride and joy was a chubby little chap fast being made a nervous wreck.

I had called at the noon hour to attend another member of the family. The father came in from work, and straightway made for baby’s crib, where the youngster sat quietly playing with his toes.

“Chick-a-choo, chick-a-choo! How’s daddy’s big man today?” inquired the father, and with every “chick” and every “choo” he jabbed his finger into baby’s ribs. Then he picked him up, and tossed him high. Then he hung the poor little thing in the crook of his arm, and bored into him with his nose and bristly mustache.

The baby puckered his little face, squirmed, gasped, and began to cry.

Later big sister came in from school, and proceeded to trot baby on her none-too-plump knee. Up and down she trotted him, and chanted something about “Ride a gray horse to Danbury Cross.” Baby stopped smiling. His breath began to come “ug-ug-ug” with every jounce. The knee hurt him, and he proceeded to cry again.

And then an aunt played with him for a while, and the hired man came in and tickled baby’s feet, and brother danced a paper so close to baby’s eyes that he almost looked cross-eyed at it. Mother took him up when the others had got well into their meal and she had a free moment. Baby was fretful and hungry, especially hungry, but before feeding him she jounced him up and down, dandled him on her knee, made him “shake a da-da” to every one at the table, shaking his tender little arm until his tiny wrist must have ached. By the time she got him well jounced up and thoroughly upset, she proceeded to feed him. It took him five minutes to become quiet; and the milk he took during that five minutes did not digest at all. It never does under such circumstances. Father tossed him up again before he left, and chucked him in his tiny ribs until he was crying lustily. Grandma came out. She hobbled over to her son, and took the baby away from him.

“You won’t have any baby if you jounce him all the time!” she exclaimed.

“But he won’t keep quiet,” protested his mother.

“Just you give him a chance!” said grandma, and she put baby down on the floor on a quilt, up against a pillow. In about ten minutes baby was cooing, and looking about and playing with his toes. He was just beginning to get comfortable.

Then I chipped in with this dear, old-fashioned grandmother, and told them all, from little brother up through the list, that they were overworking this baby—they were shaking him up inside, actually hurting his little legs and arms and ribs, and especially the end of his tiny, weak spine, by jouncing him.

“You call it amusing this baby,” I said, “but you are really amusing yourselves by handling him so much and so roughly. If you really love him, give him a chance to grow. If you have any imagination, sit down for a moment, and imagine that a great big giant three or four times as tall as any of you, came along and tossed you up in the air, and jounced you on his knee, and poked you in the ribs, and snuggled his great hairy face down into your neck, and repeated this about twenty times a day. Just picture this to yourself. That’s what is happening to your baby. Give him a chance!” I know they call me a “grouchy old doctor,” but the talk had a good effect. I have told hundreds of other parents the same thing.

You can love your baby without hurting him. Remember, he is very tender; all his bones are mostly gristle, all his internal organs are only partly developed. When you toss him around and shake him up, you are doing him a great injury.

Given plenty of food, dry clothes, and a clean, cheerful, well-ventilated room, baby will sit down on a blanket, braced up against a pillow, or remain in a baby pen, and amuse himself an hour at a time by the very simple means of plucking at his toes and pounding on the blanket with his chubby fist.

Babies keep extremely busy naturally. They have many muscles to exercise, many joints to strengthen, and a great amount of growing to do. Good old Mother Nature tells them how to do this in the best way. Now when it comes to “coochy-cooing” baby by poking him in the ribs with a finger, or tossing him up in the air, or grabbing hold of his dress at his stomach and playfully shaking him as you would a puppy, you are not amusing him in the least. You are abusing him, overworking him, and getting him so that he cannot be left alone a moment.

I do not mean to let the baby entirely alone. It is natural to want to hold the baby, to pat his little hand, to play with his pink little toes, to take him out in your arms for a “walk” in the garden; and these things are all right in their way. It is the overdoing it that makes the trouble. If the right sort of start is made, if baby is not tossed and mauled about all the time at the beginning, he will amuse himself far better than an adult can amuse him, and he will not cry so long as he is perfectly healthy, has dry clothes, and is not hungry.—A. M. Hughes, M. D.